


Red Sky at Morning

by literati42, tess_genor



Series: The Seafarers Saga [1]
Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Additional ships develop, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Asexual Malcolm Bright, Brimel, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Everyone Is Gay, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Acephobia, Letters, M/M, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Mental Health Issues, Queer Themes, Revolutionaries, Romance, Slow Burn, Solarpunk, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27221557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literati42/pseuds/literati42, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tess_genor/pseuds/tess_genor
Summary: In a steam/solarpunk AU, Malcolm Bright sails the seas as the first mate to his adopted sister, Captain Dani, in the wake of nuclear destruction. Dani searches for her missing brother, JT, not knowing that he lives above them in the skies where Nicholas Endicott and his fiancé, Ainsley have risen to rule those who could afford safety.Those that fly above abandon everyone below including people like Dani and Malcolm (pirates) Nico (a scavenger) Edrisa (a commune leader) and Gil (the owner of the world's last remaining pub).Together, they will search the skies and seas and build a new future in their wake. There will be a red sky in the morning and revolution at night.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/JT Tarmel
Series: The Seafarers Saga [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1987441
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12
Collections: Prodigal Son Big Bang 2020 - Thursday Posts





	1. Cover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justinowensart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justinowensart/gifts), [Creative_Cha0s](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creative_Cha0s/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art for Red Sky at Morning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27222250) by [justinowensart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justinowensart/pseuds/justinowensart). 



> Words cannot describe how much I want to thank and hype my amazing team!
> 
> Beta/artist: Tess_genor. Tess was an amazing beta, but she was so much more than that. She brainstormed with me, and some of the most interesting ideas in this story came from her brilliant brain. She created gorgeous mood boards representing the locations in the story! This was very much so a collective effort with her every step of the way. And in the process she became of the best friends in my life. So much love to this amazing beta, human, and friend. <3
> 
> Cover Artist: Justinowensart. Justin's piece is stunning! Words cannot describe. I teared up when I first saw it. He so perfectly realized my vision! (And kindly hosting the images!)
> 
> Header Artist: Creative_Cha0s: Jess created the brilliant headers you see throughout the story! I am stunned by her work and the level of detail and care she put into each piece. Especially keep your eyes on the one for chapter 2 (you'll see why!)
> 
> Thank you to all of you my brilliant team! This story would not have been half of what it is now without you all. I am so happy we went on this journey together!  
> -Chris Literati42 (the writer)
> 
> Playlist for the story created by Tess and Chris: [Red Sky Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3YIy2jtZs9Bz31uJ1b7yLZ?si=dTWGpN-wQBKRdxB4dcaZ8w)


	2. Prelude

_ Dear Endicott, _

_ I should call you Nicholas, shouldn’t I? This is an awfully formal way to start a letter like this, but maybe formal is what this letter needs. _

__ _ Dear Endicott, I would formally like to tell you to go fuck yourself. I will not be accepting your hand in marriage. I will not be accepting the world you have created. You so delight in the tragedy of all humankind while you stand above it, as if it does not dirty the soles of your shoes. I know what you have promised me, I know what you threaten inbetween the words. I want none of it, none of you. _

__ _ I do not accept that this is my life. _

_ Sincerely as I have never been before, _

_ Ainsley Whitly _

The letter hung from Ainsley’s hand as she leaned on the rail of the ship that floated through the clouds. She released it, unread by the eyes it was written for, and watched it float free. Free as she would never be. 


	3. Chapter 1: Dear JT

_Dear JT,_

_Sometimes I try to think of what I remember from before the Event. Do I remember the smell of smoke in the air? Did I see that final flash or did I sleep through it? I was so young it seems possible I was not awake and aware at the end of all things. I think there are moments I remember, but what is my memory and what are the stories I’ve heard over the years? Everyone tells the same things. They woke up the morning after, and the sky was red._

_Sometimes I think about what it would be like if we still had twenty-four hour news like we did Before, the way Gil always describes it. I think they would be saying something about the dust in the air and how it catches the sun like contaminated clouds. Maybe there is another explanation. What was it like back then, to always know what was happening everywhere?_

_What was it like when there was an everywhere?_

_All this to say, I don’t know what I remember, but I know I remember you. We became family because of the war, and you became my entire world. We were small, and the details have flown away into that red sky, but I remember feeling safe when you were near. I am not sure I have ever felt safe since._

_There is still a red sky each morning, and I still haven’t found you._

_Love,_

_Dani_

_-_-_

Dani tucked the letter into a wooden box on the shelf beside her bed. She pulled on her coat, an evergreen color cloak with tails that hung down midcalf. She fastened the brass buttons until she reached her throat, where the clockwork pendant hung, ticking. Dani pulled up her shined black boots, covering the bottom of her breeches. Finally, she shook out her braids, letting them fall around her shoulders, and added her tricorne hat.

Dani squared her shoulders and walked out the door, stepping into the sunlight.

“Captain on deck!” called the voice of a man to her left. Her eyes adjusted to the red, morning light, revealing a deck full of people, busy at the business of sailing. “How is the weather, Stamens?”

“An easy day ahead, Captain,” the woman called back from her perch in the crow’s nest. Dani nodded, walking down to the lower deck, her eyes tracing over the people under her command and the ship that was hers alone. Flotsam, her ship and her home. A flutter of wings drew her attention. She watched the brass dragon take flight from the riggings and alight on her shoulder. Dani saw the creature tilt her head to the side, her long neck showing the shift of gears as it moved. The bat-like wings fluttered, and the tail whipped. “Hello, Sunshine,” she said to the clockwork dragon. Her tail wrapped affectionately around Dani’s neck. Dani lifted her hand and stroked her head. “And where is your person?” Sunshine turned her head, staring pointedly to the port side.

Dani made her way to the port side, looking over the side of the ship. A soft smile came to her lips.

Down by the water, a platform rested for crew members to climb down and check the algae harvest. The platform was narrow, enough space to stand on, but certainly not comfortable for its current use. On the thin platform lay Malcolm Bright, first mate of her ship and chosen brother of her heart. His hand rested in the water, letting it run through his fingers as the ship moved. The ocean reflected the red of the sky, and from this angle, his one eye she could see caught the reflection, giving it an otherworldly quality. He was only half-dressed in his breeches, with his billowing white shirt unbuttoned. “You’re like a cat,” Dani said, stepping over the side and making her way down the rope ladder. “Lying precariously in the most dangerous places.”

“I love to watch the sunrise over the water,” Bright said without looking up, “you know this.”

“And if my first mate falls into the water, and I am forced to promote one of these people, I will comfort myself knowing he died doing something completely unimportant.”

Bright turned his face toward her, and she saw his other eye. The scar still clear against his pale skin, but mostly covered now by the clockwork augmentation device that returned his sight. The gears of it adjusted as he focused on her. She leaned closer and frowned.

“We’ll need to see Nico,” she said, “Those gears aren’t adjusting fast enough.”

Bright sat up slowly, “We need to locate the Collective first. Our supplies are getting low.”

Dani sat on her heels, “How is your vision?”

“Fine?”

“So, you’re fine,” she said, arching an eyebrow, “But are you good?”

“I’m fine,” he replied cryptically. “Are you ready to sail this ship, Captain Powell?” In that moment, he sounded like the young boy she first met, asking her to play a game with him.

“Ready to catch that horizon, First Mate Bright,” she replied, hopping back to her feet and offering him a hand. She pulled him up, and matched his smile.

_-_-_

It was deep into the afternoon when Sunshine landed on Bright’s shoulder, giving a tiny kitten like sound and nipping his ear. “Did you see it?” he asked. The creature gave a chirp and a whir. “Captain,” he called, “Collective off the starboard bow.”

He climbed up into the riggings, the wind whipping through his hair. Bright pulled out his telescope, pressing it to his clockwork eye. They worked in unison to increase his sight. In the distance, he saw the gleaming white Collective. Bright lowered the scope, glancing down to see Dani staring up at him.

“We’ll be there shortly,” she said even though he was the one who had spotted it. He nodded, tilting his face back into the wind.

When they were young, standing on the beach and staring at the ocean outside of the Pub Between Worlds, Dani spoke of her desire to be free. She took his hand, lifting it to point out the boats passing by. “One day, I’ll Captain one of those ships.” Malcolm dropped his hand away from hers. He reached up and touched the patch over his eye with shaking fingers. Young Dani watched him, “We won’t be like him. Our ship will be better. We’ll make something better.”

“Why would we ever leave here?” Malcolm asked back then. They lived at the Pub Between Worlds, and he could not imagine a place that he would rather be.

That conversation floated to his mind from years past. He still could not imagine a happier place than the Pub Between Worlds, but they had left. In the end, they were given no choice. Did the sea still count as freedom if Bright never had a choice in taking to it?

_-_-_

“A city in the clouds. It was called an impossibility before the Event,” the man said, swirling wine in his glass, the red liquid almost the exact color of the sky. “It is fascinating how starting over can put what is impossible into perspective.”

Ainsley leaned forward, putting her chin on her hand. The man across the table from her was Nicholas Endicott, the progenitor and leader of their sky-bound community. The City in the Clouds was his dream. Endicott was a man who lost everything during the war only to find himself after the Event. The moment that destroyed the world as they knew it was Endicott’s rebirth. From nothing, he made himself into a legend. He was a self-made man that remade the world with him.

Framed by the floor to ceiling window of his airship, the red light became almost a halo behind him. Here he was, the man that people called the Aria, majestic in the room where he made decisions that rippled through what was left of the world.

Endicott reached under the table, putting his hand on her knee and sliding it up until it was just under the hem of her skirt. Ainsley tilted her chin, leaning closer again. “Were you always so certain of what you wanted?”

He moved closer to her, “Always,” he said, “And I get what I want.” He kissed her then, the taste of wine on his lips. She did not hesitate, deepening his kiss. Endicott pulled away from her and looked up at the door. Ainsley realized he must have heard something she did not because there in the doorway was a soldier, looking fine in his perfectly straight uniform.

“Didn’t want to interrupt,” he said. Endicott stood, spreading his hands as if to move the soldier like a puppet. 

“You came when summoned, an admirable quality in a soldier, Sergeant Tarmel,” he replied, “Let me present my fiancé, Ainsley Whitly.” Ainsley stood as well, watching JT glance her way. “Don’t worry about her,” Endicott said, “You can speak freely. I have no secrets from my fiancé.”

Ainsley put on a pretty smile, one that said she was loyal and nonthreatening. A smile she practiced in the mirror every night.

“I understand you have special orders for me, Commander.”

“At ease, Sergeant,” Endicott replied. Ainsley wondered if the man knew that regardless of his commands, no one was ever at ease around him. She suspected he did know, and if he did, that meant he intended it. There were no accidents in the world of Nicholas Endicott, Commander of the City in the Clouds. Endicott went to his writing desk, picking up a sealed communique and passing it to the soldier. “You have recently distinguished yourself, and because of that, I believe I can entrust you with a particular task that requires the utmost secrecy.” He nodded at the paper, and the soldier unrolled it, brows furrowing. “Yes, I see your surprise, but the map is accurate. A select group of my soldiers have been making expeditions to the mainland, mapping out what the world looks like post Event.”

“I don’t understand,” JT said, “No one can live there.”

Endicott clicked his tongue dismissively. “Dangerous is not the same as uninhabitable. If we are to expand, we must start reclaiming the land. I see the look in your eyes, Sergeant Tarmel. You think this is impossible. I know that look because I saw it before in the eyes of every person who told me it was impossible to colonize the clouds.” He waved his hand at the window. “When you have done the impossible before, you start to view possibility very differently,” Endicott smiled, “Now, prepare for your journey. We will be approaching the neutral land soon. You will head to the Pub Between Worlds and use it as your base to begin exploring.” Endicott gave a smile that Ainsley had seen people do anything to receive. “Chin up, Sergeant. You get the opportunity to help write history.”

JT bowed slightly. “Yes, sir.”

“Ainsley, perhaps the Sergeant can escort you home on his way to the barracks. I unfortunately, must cut our time short.”

Ainsley batted her eyes, laying a hand on his arm. “If we must.”

“We must,” he replied. He kissed Ainsley again, his hand on the small of her back. When he released her, she headed to the door, not waiting to see if the soldier would fall in step behind her. Once in the hallway, she felt something uncoil in her gut. Ainsley took a breath, then turned her attention to the man beside her.

“Is he always…” Sergeant Tarmel began.

“What?” Ainsley asked, “Commanding? Completely certain of himself in a way that can be overwhelming to watch? Making proclamations that seem way too articulate to be spur of the moment and leave you wondering if he planned every beat of the conversation before you entered the room?” She looked fully at JT as he raised an eyebrow in response. “Yes. He is always like that.”

“I’m sure you know him better than I do,” Tarmel said. Ainsley smirked slightly and started walking.

“You didn’t expect me to criticize him?” she said, “Believe me, Sergeant Tarmel. I would be a pretty poor companion if I didn’t know his bad qualities as well as his good. What kind of relationship would that be.” She tried to read his expression again. “Not what you expected the fiancé of Commander Endicott to be like?”

“I have no expectations.”

His tone was so dry she paused for a moment, then laughed. “I doubt that.” She nodded her head to the left, “This way. I need to check in on my mother.”

“Is she unwell?”

“No, she just can’t be trusted on her own for long.”

This time it was the soldier who laughed.

Ainsley smiled his way and stopped outside a door. She raised her hand to knock, but the door jerked open before she could. A man stood there, giving her a slight shrug.

“Is that my wayward daughter?” her mother’s voice carried from the other room. “Adolpho, let her in.” Her mother, Jessica, appeared in the doorway. Her eyes traced over Ainsley and went to JT, who had not had the chance to escape. “Ainsley, who did you bring to see me?” The woman came toward them.

“No one,” Ainsley said, stepping inside, “This soldier was kind enough to walk me home.”

“What an attentive fiancé you have,” Jessica said, as she looked JT up and down, offering her hand. “Hello, Sergeant.”

“Sergeant JT Tarmel, ma’am,” he replied, taking her hand and bowing slightly.

“A pleasure,” Jessica said, letting her tone practically drip.

“Okay, mother, the Sergeant has important work for my fiancé. So maybe you can let go of the man’s hand.”

Jessica dropped it, but not without giving Ainsley an unamused look. “I am sure your fiancé can spare the soldier for a moment to provide me with a brief service.” She turned her eyes questioningly on JT.

“How can I help you, Ma’am.”

Jessica waved him inside, leading him and Ainsley into her quarters. “Could you help me move this?” She motioned for the armchair by the window.

“Mother,” Ainsley said, “Tasks like this are why Nicholas assigned you Adolpho. You can’t just use the soldiers like you personal servants.”

“What is the point of my daughter marrying the most powerful man in the world if I can’t use it to help me do a few simple tasks.”

Ainsley rolled her eyes, but JT merely walked over, lifting the chair and moving it to where her mother pointed.

“Thank you, Sergeant Tarmel.”

“My pleasure, Mrs. Whitly.”

“Feel free to stop by any time.”

“Alright,” Ainsley said, “Let me show you out, Sergeant.” She headed back to the door, but stepped out with him before she shut it. “I am so sorry you had to deal with that.”

“It’s no trouble,” he replied. “Good day, Ms. Whitly.”

_-_-_

The Commander’s fiancé closed the door, cutting JT off from her and her interesting mother. JT shook his head. She was definitely not what he expected. He did not think of the Commander’s personal life often, but the City in the Clouds was a small place, and gossip traveled quickly. When he heard that Commander Endicott was marrying a virtual nobody, it was a curiosity. He expected that she would be beautiful, which she was. He expected her to be submissive and deferring too, but while her smiles were simple in Endicott’s presence, Ainsley Whitly’s intelligence reflected in the spark of her eyes and her quick tongue.

JT shook the mystery off. He was a soldier, from a different strata than these people, and becoming invested in the lives of the upper class would be a meaningless waste of his energy. He had a task to do. He glanced at the papers in his hand. JT was bound for the Pub Between Worlds and the uninhabitable land surrounding it.

_-_-_

“Collective straight ahead, First Mate Bright,” Stamens called to him. Bright nodded, pulling himself up into the riggings again so he could get the first glimpse of it. The Collective was a floating paradise. The white, smooth walls shone in the light of the sun. It was in many respects more a human-made island than a ship, though it moved with the currents. The Collective was intersecting circles of white metal, every surface designed to harness as much energy from the sun as possible. On every space grew the most beautiful plants. It was green and white in every direction. Malcolm found himself smiling softly as their ship drew up beside it. The closer they got, the more he could hear music: drums and pipes.

“Lay anchor,” Dani called.

He jumped down from his perch and went to help release the gangplank, creating a bridge between his little world and the Collective’s.

“Is that the good sailor Malcolm Bright I see?”

Bright stepped up on the plank and saw the woman waiting for him on the other side. She was short, with hair cut up above her shoulders. She wore baggy green pants that billowed out at the knee and a loose-fitting blue shirt that dipped low. Her wrists were adorned with colorful woven bracelets. A smile broke out across her face.

“It is you!”

“Hello, Edrisa,” he said. She rushed over hugging him. People on the Collective tended to be especially fond of touch, and Bright wondered when he would get used to that fact. She released him and patted his bicep.

“You’re so slender!” she said. Then before he could answer, she grabbed his chin, getting on her tiptoes and squinting at his eye. “The scars are red, Bright.”

Dani came up the gangplank behind him, putting her chin on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll make him go to the Apothecary before we leave.”

“Good,” Edrisa said, “Hi, Dani!” She ran over and hugged the woman too. Bright watched his chosen sister hug her back. Dani was not demonstrative with touch toward most people, but whenever she received it, it seemed to make her genuinely happy. “Come on, you two.” Edrisa grabbed their hands and led them off the plank and onto the green mossy ground of the Collective’s floating solar farm.

She led them down the smooth pathways through the gardens. Bright’s eyes took it all in. “You’ve added a lot since we were here last,” he said, noting the area decorated with smooth stones where the musicians were gathered, barefoot and cross-legged on the ground, creating the music that floated peacefully around them.

“It’s amazing what you can do when you work together,” she said, beaming at him.

“Yes, but you dreamed this place into existence.”

She laughed, swatting a hand on his chest, “Oh stop,” she said, “It was a collaboration.”

“Someone had to have the idea.”

His words brought another giggle from her, and she pushed her hair back behind her ear. Bright noticed Dani’s raised eyebrow and furrowed his brow in response. She shook her head at him. “Why don’t you go to the Apothecary. Edrisa and I can sort the crops.”

“Aye, Captain,” he replied, giving her a little bow. Dani shook her head at him again, but whatever he look was from before, it was fond amusement now.

Bright gave Edrisa a small smile and took the path that split from theirs. He walked through rows of herbs growing beautifully. Edrisa’s plan to collect different types of soil seemed to be panning out. He paused next to a patch of lavender, the purple flowers growing up toward the red sun. Bright leaned down, breathing in the scent of it. After so long at sea on the Flotsam, the smell of flowers was practically overwhelming.

“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” said a deep woman’s voice. He turned to see Gabrielle Le Deux, straightening up from where she had been working in the garden. She was adorned in soft brow and purple flowing clothes that seemed almost to flutter with her movements. She came forward and gently took his hand rather than hugging him. Gabrielle seemed to be one of the few members of the Collective that realized other Seafarers might not enter their home ready to form an immediate cuddle pile.

“They are beautiful,” he replied. “We don’t see sights like this in the open water often.”

Gabrielle looked around, smiling, “There never has been anywhere else like this.” Her eyes fixed back on him. “You could always stay. You have a home here, Malcolm. If you ever want it.”

Bright pulled his hand away, “You know I can’t.”

She nodded slowly, though it did not feel like an agreement. “Were you coming to see me?” she squinted at him. “Your eye is red.”

“As people continue telling me.”

“Yes, people’s affection is such a burden to bear,” Gabrielle said, her tone light and teasing. “Come on, let’s have a look.” Gabrielle lead him down the path. Her home was a small round dwelling built into the city like every other dwelling on the Collective. Moss and ivy grew up across it, with branches hanging down over the purple curtain door. She pushed this back and led him inside. The Apothecary, as people had taken to calling Gabrielle’s home, had started as any living quarters might. Then as she continued to work at growing her herbs and collecting what knowledge she could from every person they encountered, she slowly built a safe haven where she could tend to wounds. In her other life, before the Event, Gabrielle insisted she was not that kind of doctor, but people learned fast when society was gone. People did what they had to do.

Her home was lined with open shelfs that wrapped around it, giving it an almost hive-like aesthetic. Each shelf had pots with various labels and equipment. Bright picked up one that did not fit the naturalistic look of the Collective. It was gears and scavenged materials.

“Registers temperature,” Gabrielle said.

“This is one of Nico’s creations,” Bright replied, “New?”

“Oh yes, Nico came through here yesterday.”

“Good, so it won’t take us long to find him.”

“I imagine he will head toward land. Nico was running low on material.”

Bright nodded, filing this away as she motioned for him to sit on the wooden chair that she pulled out into the beam of light coming in from a skylight. He took it and tilted his head, cringing as she poked at the flesh around his clockwork augmentation. “It’s infected.” She raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t been using the salve I gave you?”

“I do,” Bright replied.

“Regularly?”

“It’s…”

“Don’t you dare say it’s fine when I am looking at the infection with my own eyes,” Gabrielle said, her tone stern. She put a hand on her hip and examined him. “How are you this old, and you still don’t know that you have to care for yourself.” Though her scolding was genuine, Bright heard the soft affection in her tone. “I’ll make you some more, but you will be putting it on regularly.” She pointed a finger at him, “Don’t make me tell Dani she has to do it.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t I?” She stopped prodding his eye and pulled up a chair of her own, meeting his gaze. “And the other things we talked about? Don’t say fine.”

Malcolm let out a breath, “The dreams haven’t stopped. Some nights I wake up screaming.” He felt his hand start shaking, “And during the day…”

“The heaviness?”

“The heaviness, so strong I struggle to do the simplest tasks. Then other times, my heart won’t stop beating and beating. It feels like…” Bright cast around for the right words. “Like a storm inside me. Like when the waves are choppy, and the wind attacks you at all sides.” He looked up at her, “Does that make sense?” Gabrielle patted his hand.

“It does,” she replied. “It sounds like what I used to work with.”

Bright frowned, “You think I’m crazy.”

“No, no,” Gabrielle said, her tone going firm. “I think your father did more than hurt your eye.” Bright looked away from her, focusing on the tremors in his fingers.

“Have anything for it?”

“I can make you a tonic for sleep,” she said, “And maybe something for when the worst feelings come.” She stood, walking to the shelves, and searching for ingredients. Gabrielle began to grind some manner of leaf. Bright stood too and watching her work.

“You seem frustrated.”

She glanced up at him, “Not at you.” She let out a breath, putting more weight than seemed necessary into crushing the leaf. “You are too young to remember before the Event, but I do. I remember the war, of course, but I remember so much else too. We had advanced to a place you could only dream of.” She shook her head, “There were ships, rockets, that could leave the atmosphere. We had devices, computers, that could find any information in the world.”

“And weapons that could destroy almost the entire human population and leave the environment in ruins,” Bright replied.

“Yes,” she replied, “We created so much, and we used it so poorly, but before that, there were good things too. Medicines. Things that could have helped you.” She shook her head, “We didn’t just lose technology. We lost so many brilliant minds. Edrisa likes to say the Collective is our chance to build something better, and that’s true. We have a chance to create peace like there never was in the old world, but we did lose a lot too. Our greed and our hate and our pride were our undoing. It breaks my heart to know there are some people who see this new world as a chance to make the same mistakes all over again.”

“The City in the Clouds,” Malcolm said, glancing up through her skylight as if he could see it even though it was likely far from here. “And the Floaters who live there.”

“Yes,” she said, “And some of the Seafarers too.”

Bright looked away. “My father.”

Gabrielle poured the ground leaf, now a powder, into a bowl and began mixing it with other ingredients he did not bother trying to track. “I cherish that you shared your story with me, Malcolm.”

He looked up at her. “Thank you, Gabrielle.”

“This will take some time,” she said, “Why don’t you go along, and I will bring them to you at the dinner tonight.”

He gave a slight bow, heading out the door and down the path.

“Malcolm,” her voice stopped him, and he turned around to see her. Her eyes left him and traced across the flowers growing in her garden. “You know, plants before the Event needed yellow sun to grow. When we realized the sun just kept staying red, we were scared.” She stepped out of her doorway and ran her hand lightly across the lavender blooms. “The plants did die, but then they grew again. Maybe they mutated from the Event, growing from polluted soil, or maybe they adapted.” She shrugged slightly, “Either way, they were nearly destroyed. Destroyed by the evils of human hands. They are not the same flowers that they were, not exactly. They are different, but they are not broken. They came back stronger than they ever were before.”

Malcolm tilted his head slightly, “Is this supposed to be a metaphor or an extended botany lesson?”

She gave him a pointed look. “You’ll take what you need from it when you’re ready to hear it,” she said. Without another goodbye, the woman disappeared back into her house, leaving him to walk through the rows of plants, alone with his thoughts. 

_-_-_

As the sun went down, the lights strung around the Collective’s gathering place came on. All day long they soaked in energy and they returned it during the night, giving a fairy quality to the space. Bright felt full from natural fruits and vegetables, grown right there, and a bit more wine than he usually enjoyed. He found Dani sitting cross-legged and smiling, watching the crew of the Flotsam join with the Collective to dance and laugh. He dropped down on the ground beside her, laying out, propped up on his elbow. Bright looked up, noticing the flowers strewn through her hair. He touched one of the blooms as she turned to smile down at him.

“It’s always hard to leave this place, isn’t it?” she said, glancing at her ship moored beside the Collective.

“Imagine us staying here?” he said, “We’d destroy the whole place in a week.”

She gave one of her almost soundless laughs. Dani looked back down into his face. She lifted her eyes, finding Edrisa in the middle of the dance circle, head thrown back in joy. “I’m sure she’d be delighted if you went and danced with her?”

Malcolm laughed, “I’m not sure she could handle it.” He glanced up and saw Dani’s look again.

“I think she’s in love with you, Mal.”

His smile dropped, and he glanced across to watch her dancing. “I know.” Malcolm let out a breath, “She wouldn’t be if she knew.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah? You think if I went up to her and said ‘Edrisa, I actually hate the idea of sex because I’m broken,’ she’d still be into me?”

“You are not broken,” Dani said, reaching over and gently pushing his hair away from his face. “Not wanting sex doesn’t make you broken. Don’t say that. Don’t think it.”

Bright shook his head, rolling over and sitting up. “Gabrielle says Nico was here yesterday,” Bright said, “But she thinks he was heading to land to scavenge. He was low on materials.”

Dani gave him a look that said changing the subject did not mean it was permanently dropped, then seemed to consider his words. “There’s no point in trying to catch up with him now then,” she said, “Maybe we head to land too, see what we can collect to trade with Nico before we go find him.”

“So, we’re heading to the Pub Between Worlds?”

“It looks like we are.”


	4. Chapter 2: Dear Mal

_Dear Mal,_

_I bet you wouldn’t recognize me now. I don’t just mean because we’ve grown up, though that is part of it. I am sitting in the Cloud City, high above the polluted Earth, surrounded on all sides by red sky. Not only that, but in the most luxurious quarters. I did this. I did this for me and mother. I got us here._

_You wouldn’t believe what I’ve sacrificed to do it._

_Endicott is a man of style. During the war, his family was killed, he lost everything, and after the Event, he decided he would never live with nothing again. He created this whole city out of nothing. His vision built these very walls. This ship is called the Aria, but the Aria is really him. He is the song the whole sky sings._

_Does it sound like I’m repeating a familiar story? That is because I am. Every day since I became his companion, I have heard that exact story told to someone. If there is a mythos behind Endicott, it is because he crafted it himself. There is a truth to his name, the Aria, in that he composed everything about how people perceive him. The Endicott that people know is a creation. The real man is something else entirely._

_I have given myself to him, every part of myself the world sees. I wish it made me feel gross or cheap, but it doesn’t. It makes me feel nothing. Maybe that’s the scariest part in the end. He may have every public part of me and more than a few of the private ones, but there are some parts of me he does not even know he doesn’t have. There are things that I keep for me. Otherwise, how would I know I was a person, and not another tool to craft his empire?_

_Does Endicott believe I love him when I look longingly at the ring on my finger or grab his arm as we walk through the airship? I think not. I think dear Nicholas knows exactly how much I hate him. To be fair, he does not love me either. He loves the power he holds over me. He loves that he can, with a snap of his finger, destroy my life. He loves that he holds my secrets. Can I blame him for this when I am using him in return? Yes. It turns out, I can._

_See, I told you, you would not recognize me anymore._

_Would I recognize you? I suspect you are at the bottom of the ocean or in an unmarked grave, but if you are alive as mother still insists, who would you be now? I used to think about that every day, but sometimes, I will go through a whole day without thinking about you once. Of all the things I am doing, that is the only one I am ashamed of._

_Despite who I have become, I remain,_

_Your Sister._

_-_-_

Ainsley looked at the letter she wrote in her careful handwriting. She stared at the words until they started to lose meaning. Then, she lifted the letter and held it to the flame. Ainsley watched the fire spread over her words, removing any trace of them.

“Has no one told you the danger of lighting fires in an airship?”

She smiled, setting the last remnant of the letter in her dish to destroy itself, and turned around. “Jin!”

The soldier rewarded her with one of his dazzling smiles. She got up and ran into his arms. Jin was still in his uniform, and he smelled of sweat and oil from the engine rooms. Ainsley kissed his neck and then pulled back, “Hello, Jin.”

“Hello, darling,” he said, “Do I need to ask what evidence you were destroying?”

“Oh, just a love letter for you that I had to destroy before it fell into the wrong hands,” she lied.

“Oh,” he purred, kissing her forehead, “It wouldn’t do for the fiancé of the Commander to be writing love letters to a lowly soldier.” He said this, and she knew her lie had been convincing. They always were.

“How long do you have?” she asked.

“Only a short time before they will expect me back.”

She began unfastening the buttons of his uniform. He kissed her, deep and full of love. Ainsley knew he loved her, and she knew Jin assumed she loved him too. She let him keep assuming this. It was another lie, she guessed.

_-_-_

Bright stood on the front of the rowboat as they traversed the distance between their anchored ship and land. He watched the building come into focus. It was a lighthouse planted on top of the grassy hill, just at the edge of the beach. Ivy caressed the sides of the tower. The roof was covered in panels to harness solar energy. This was the Pub Between Worlds, and until a few years ago, it was Malcolm’s home.

He glanced at Dani. Bright knew her well enough to know that behind her calm exterior, she always felt a mix of excitement and pride as they approached the Pub. Like him, She was excited to go home. She was proud that she was able to enter the doors in her Captain attire. Dani held her chin a little higher as the rowboat met land.

“Captain,” Malcolm said, smiling at her. She nodded at him, leading the way up the beach. The doors of the Pub flew open.

“Is that my kids come home?”

Bright broke out into a smile. Gil stood there in the doorway, his beard flecked with more grey hairs than the last time they saw him. His baggy cream-colored clothes made him blend into the structure around him. His cat wove around his boots. Together, his entire appearance exuded warmth that was uniquely Gil Arroyo. He met them halfway, pulling Malcolm into a hug immediately. “You look thin, kid. You having a food shortage?”

“No shortage, just terrible self-preservation skills,” Dani replied, and Gil turned to her. He looked at her in her Captain gear and opened his arms wide.

“Captain Dani Powell,” he said her name in a way that meant ‘I’m proud of you,’ and then he hugged her. “Come inside,” Gil said then, keeping one hand on Dani’s shoulder and putting the other on Malcolm’s, directing them as if they could not find the way. “I have a stew on the fire and a new brew.”

“Sounds beautiful,” Dani said, beaming at him in return.

Gil guided them to a table and at once headed behind the bar to bring them food and drink. Malcolm watched him, a quiet longing in his gut. He loved sailing with Dani, but it was always hard to come home knowing he would have to leave again.

Gil walked to the fire, where a large cast-iron pot hung. He began stirring it, filling the room with warm, savory smells. Bright smiled at the scene, then something by the window caught his attention. He stood, walking over to look through the glass.

Outside, on the hill, sat a sleek, silver cylinder shaped airship with sails rising from it. It was just big enough for one occupant. “Gil,” he said, “There’s a Floater here.”

His surrogate father walked over, arms laden with two steaming bowls of stew. Gil gave Malcolm a meaningful look. “The Pub is neutral ground.”

“Still, you don’t get many Floaters here.”

“I believe that’s not the term they prefer,” Gil said, his tone a warning, “But yes, there is an occupant from the City here. A soldier, I believe. Don’t cause trouble.”

Bright crossed his arms, “If a soldier is staying here, then I’m not the one here to cause trouble.”

Gil glanced at him once more before heading over to the table. Bright followed, eyeing the people at the various tables around the room. Everyone around him was sporting clockwork gear or augmentations, the kind of thing considered appalling to the City inhabitants. It was clear the Floater soldier was not in the room.

_-_-_

When JT arrived at the Pub Between Worlds earlier that day, he found the owner—a Gil Arroyo—to be a reasonable man. However, every other occupant of the Pub turned to look at him as if they practiced doing it in unison. He felt the temperature drop at their gazes. JT decided to head to his room before purchasing anything for dinner.

He waited until it was fairly late to head back down. By the time he reentered the main room, most of the pirates had either returned to their boats or the rooms they were renting above the Pub. There were a few hardened looking fellows in the corner, but they were more interested in their brew than him. He paused. The only other sober people in the room were Arroyo and a young pirate. The man with Arroyo was thin—JT imagined the City inhabitants describing him as emaciated. He had pale skin, and dark hair that kept falling into his eyes each time he spoke with a dramatic gesture—which was frequent. Gil leaned on the bar across from him, listening to his story, until he saw JT. The Pub owner stood up, “Hungry?” he asked. The man with him turned and looked at JT too.

One eye was stunning, blue like the ocean before the sky went red. The other was ravaged by a clockwork device. JT felt his skin crawl at the sight of metal inserted into flesh. He quickly schooled his features, but the other man clearly did not have the same instinct to hide his emotions. JT could read the hate clear in his eyes. He watched the man cross his arms, glaring as he looked JT up and down.

“Yes, I am hungry,” JT said, forcing himself to look away from this man and focus on Arroyo. He approached the bar, “Some stew and a cup of your brew.” He kept some space between himself and the man as he took a seat at the bar, but JT saw the other man was still staring at him. “Problem?”

“No,” Gil answered before the other man could answer. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “This is my son, Bright.”

“Your son is a pirate?” JT asked, wondering if he needed to rethink his assessment of Gil as a reasonable man.

He watched this Bright tense, but Arroyo’s hand stayed on his shoulder.

“He’s a Seafarer.”

“Pirates are murderers and thieves, historically,” Bright said, “We don’t steal. We don’t kill. Not everyone who sails is a criminal.”

“Bright,” Gil warned.

“Oh, and you didn’t make up your mind about me before I said a word?” JT asked.

“Be careful, Gil,” Bright said without taking his eyes from JT. “You know how Floaters like to claim what isn’t theirs. You might want to keep track of your valuables.”

“Enough,” Gil said, turning to face the younger man, “Maybe walk it off.” Bright let out a huff, turning and walking out the backdoor of the Pub, into the garden. JT watched him. He felt heated, part of him wanting to follow the man and keep arguing. JT shook his head, focusing on the Pub owner.

He glanced at Gil as he took a sip of the brew. “He seems…” JT pitched around for a word, “Intense.”

“He hasn’t been treated well by people from your City,” Gil said, “The uniform might have triggered some things.” Without saying more, he turned and went back to cleaning up from dinner. JT frowned, his eyes going back to the garden door for a moment.

Sergeant JT Tarmel found that life in the City in the Clouds improved with the fewer questions he asked. No one rewarded a curious soldier. He obeyed the Commander, and when he had free hours, he stayed clear of those who would drag him into trouble. Despite that, JT found himself feeling a rare stirring of curiosity.

He also felt certain at a bone-deep level that Malcolm Bright was the kind of person who would only bring trouble.

_-_-_

By the time sunrise began to redden the sky, Bright stood in the Pub, strapping his sword to his hip.

“The storm will be here by evening,” Gil said from the doorway, as he stared out at the sky.

“We’ll head back before then,” Dani replied. She checked her pistols for the second time before holstering them on her thighs. “You ready?” She met Bright’s eyes. He gave one quick nod. “If we get separated, head back for the Pub. Don’t try to scavenge alone.”

“I know,” he replied. Bright looked away from her, glancing out the window. He saw the Floater ship still parked outside. Dani turned to follow his glance.

“What?”

“Floater is still here.”

“He doesn’t matter, Bright,” she said, “Forget about him.” Dani gripped his arm. “I need you focused before we go out there.” He turned back and met her eyes.

“I’m focused.”

She stayed in front of him. Bright knew she was searching his eyes for something, but what she found, he could not guess. “Let’s go.”

They began their walk away from the safety of the Pub.

In the aftermath of the Event, those who survived had to create safety in a world that was suddenly hostile. Some people abandoned the land altogether, building crafts for the air or sea. Other people tried to stake a claim on the land.

They were dead now. All of them.

The Pub was one of the few landlocked shelters that remained. Its position, protected by mountains on one side and a deep chasm on the other, made it relatively safe. Even still, Gil had a boat docked at all times, ready to retreat to the sea if things went pear-shaped.

Some who tried to claim the land died of the chemical waste in the soil. Most people died a much more horrible death. The Event did not just alter the plants. The animals changed too.

It was a long time before the Seafarers felt safe enough to try exploring the land. People like Nico began to craft amazing things from scavenged material, like Sunshine the dragon or Bright’s eye. Because of the danger, there was still so much left unexplored, so much left to scavenge for those willing to risk their lives.

Bright thought of these things as he walked with Dani toward the chasm. Gil called it a ravine, but that was too natural a word for the giant crack that formed in the ground during the Event. Dani walked to a pole planted at the chasm’s edge and pressed a button. With a clockwork whir, a mechanized rope bridge began stretching out. It was Nico’s invention, the first safe way to get to the other side. It retracted just as easily, keeping the horrors of the unexplored world away from the Pub.

The bridge clicked into place, and they headed across.

_-_-_

When Arroyo told him he would be traversing a massive ravine protected only by clockwork mechanisms made by a mad inventor on a floating forge, JT blinked. It seemed like the kind of joke one would play on an Air Rider who offended their son.

“It’s safe,” Gil said, “My son and daughter used it only a few moments ago.”

JT’s frown deepened and stayed in place as he approached the bridge—if one could call it that. Malcolm Bright, the man who was willing to take off JT’s head the night before just for sharing the same air, was also out here in the unexplored world.

“I’m probably safer with the animals,” he muttered. JT stared at the pole, its unsightly gears sticking out. In the City, crafters worked hard to ensure that the mechanisms of their flying ships stayed hidden. The pirates shared no such sense of aesthetics. It was like they flaunted their hodgepodge creations.

JT steeled himself and pressed the button. The bridge unfolded, making noises sure to bring every creature in hearing distance running to investigate. He cringed. Then the bridge clicked onto the other side. It was a rope bridge, the kind a person had to pull themselves across. “No, no, nope,” JT said, knowing he had no choice. He took a deep breath and started hauling himself across. It dipped and swayed sickeningly over the certain death below. “Fucking pirates and their fucking clockwork deathtraps.”

The soldier made it to the other side, getting back on solid ground as fast as humanly possible. He shook out his arms and legs as if to cast off the swaying feeling of that climb. Then JT looked forward toward the path ahead.

_-_-_

Bright and Dani carved their way through tall grass until they cleared a turn around a hill and saw their destination. Before the Event, it was a massive city. They could still see the ruins of buildings that once reached tall enough to touch the places only Endicott’s floating ships could go. Now, they were rubble, only hinting at a tower shape. Nature, so abused by the war and violated during the Event, took its revenge on the cities most of all. The mutated red sky plants broke through asphalt roads and curled around buildings until the life was squeezed out of them. At night, this place would be overrun with nature’s twisted children—the animals.

Dani examined the ruins as she led them off the grass and onto broken roads. Bright knew she had instincts better than anyone other than Nico himself. “That one,” she said, pointing toward one building that still had multiple floors standing. She drew one of her pistols and moved forward. Bright pulled his sword. Both of them quieted their breaths, listening for any movement in the corpse city around them.

_-_-_

Bright and Dani searched as the sun climbed the sky, filling their packs with the detritus of a bygone era that Nico would change, like alchemy, into something wonderful. Bright pried screws loose from a doorframe, glancing up at her. “A clockwork device that stirs tea,” he said. It was a game they played, trying to guess what their finds would one day become. They were quiet most of the day, but boredom and tension were terrible bedfellows. Slowly, caution gave way to finding ways to pass the time.

“Gil would love that.”

“Good point,” Bright said. “Maybe we can get Nico to make one.”

They left the first building to search for another. Dani paused as they stepped outside. She looked around them and then turned her eyes up to the sky. “Bright,” she said.

He followed her gaze and frowned.

“The storm’s moving faster than Gil predicted.” Dani shook her head. “We have enough. We need to head back.”

Maybe it was the way the wind whipped around them or maybe it was the growing darkness, but the subtle signs of the storm grabbed their attention immediately. That could be the only reason they did not look around leaving the building.

A low, throaty growl sounded far too close. Bright felt every hair on the back of his neck rise to attention. He spun around, sword ready. The creature before him shared some relationship to the mountain lions of the old world, but like every animal that remained alive, the Event had changed it. It was bigger than any mountain lion Gil ever told him about. Its fangs were like daggers, dripping saliva as it stared him down with its six eyes that wrapped around its head. Its tail curled, showing a vicious stinger.

Dani aimed her pistol and fired. The bullet made contact, and the creature let out a piercing cry. Then the growls sounded from either side. “Bright,” she said. He looked around them, the light filtering through the gathering storm clouds reflected in the many eyes of the creatures collecting around them. “Run!” She screamed.

Bright took off, boots pounding. He could not feel Dani at his side, but he had to trust she was there. If he slowed down, it would mean his life. If she saw him slow, it could mean both their lives. So, Bright ran with the cries of the monsters at his heels.

_-_-_

Sergeant JT Tarmel was not a cartographer. He gave a frustrated sound as he tried to draw out the path he took into the city ruins that day so that someone who knew what they were doing could make it into a map when he returned to the City in the Clouds. He made notes of everything he saw.

His work carried him up what was once an overpass and now served as a road to nowhere. It gave him a good view of this portion of the city. JT put his sketches back into his pack and frowned. The wind had changed. He looked at the sky and let out a frustrated huff. A storm meant heading back, and heading back meant his task would take longer. It looked like JT was not leaving the Pub Between Worlds anytime soon. A bloodcurdling screech shredded the quiet around him. Every nerve in his body fired at once. Then the bang of a gunshot and the screeching intensified, echoing around the city. JT searched around him, eyes landing on the running figure of a man dressed in black, with six monsters tearing at his heels.

JT knew three things at once. One, this was Malcolm Bright. Two, his mandate to get the information back to the City in the Clouds meant he should not involve himself. Three, he was going to involve himself.

The soldier drew his sword, running down the overpass at full speed just as the pack crossed his path. Mapping out the ruins had its benefits. JT took a shortcut he found earlier, coming around a building just before Bright made it to him. The soldier pushed hard on an exposed beam. With a rumble, a portion of the wall collapsed, sending rocks at the paws of the beasts. They yowled in surprise and anger, but the distraction was just enough. Bright met his eyes, and JT nodded, taking off for the next building. He hoped the younger man would follow, but if not, JT knew he had at least given Bright a chance.

JT looked up as the pirate came skidding into the building behind him. Without speaking, they moved as one to push the heavy metal door shut. Claws scraped at the door on the other side. “That won’t hold them long,” Bright said.

“What the hell are those things.”

“Mountain lions.”

“Maybe you don’t remember before the Event,” JT said, “But those fuckers aren’t mountain lions.”

“They were,” Bright replied, turning to examine the room. It was fairly empty. “We need to find a way out before they get in.”

“That’s why I ran in here,” JT said, “I scouted this place earlier.” He walked over and pushed open a door. It led up.

“We need to get out, not up,” Bright said.

“The upper floor leads to something that used to be a sky bridge,” JT said, “You know, a bridge between buildings.”

“If it used to be a bridge between buildings, what is it now?” Bright asked. His question halted in the air as a sound came from the wall behind him. He turned, listening as the clawing seemed to be getting higher. “Fuck. Fuck…They are climbing the walls.”

“They can do that?”

“Apparently, now they can,” Bright said. He met JT’s eyes, and they ran up the stairs. The upper floor had more damage, holes in the walls and the floor. Bright’s breath caught as one of the beasts clawed paws came over the edge of a hole in the wall. The creature pulled itself up, letting out a vicious growl as it met Bright’s eyes. JT grabbed his arm and pulled.

“Come on.”

Bright turned and followed him. They ran down the hall, dodging holes in the floor. A piece came loose under Bright’s foot and he stumbled, catching himself on JT. They both righted themselves and ran faster. The growls and screams alerting them that the beasts were on the same floor as them now.

Malcolm halted suddenly. Ahead of him lay what JT referred to as a former sky bridge. It was barely a skeleton, whole chunks missing. It looked like any movement could destabilize the remaining structure. “No time to think,” JT said, “Just go, soldier.” Bright did not have time to wonder about that moniker. He listened. He ran ahead of JT, jumping from one remaining structure to another. He felt things shifting and falling around him. Bright felt JT at his shoulder. A horrible cry sounded as one creature landed on a piece of rubble a moment after Bright had stepped there and fell with the pieces toward the ground.

Bright cursed, picking up the pace. He fell, hard at the entrance of the other building, slamming into the side of the opening. JT jumped inside to his left. “Reach for me!” the soldier said, his hand out toward Bright. A howling scream sounded at the same moment, and a mess of fur and muscle collided with Bright’s back.

Bright screamed as its claw dug into his shoulders just as JT grabbed his arm. The soldier’s grip was the only thing that kept him and the cat from plummeting to the street below.

“Dammit, I can’t lift you both!” JT said.

Bright tried to buck, trying to knock the monster loose. It’s claws sunk in deeper to hold it on. Malcolm threw his head back, slamming it into the cat’s maul. It howled, but held on. Then blinding pain struck him as the cat sunk its teeth into his arm. Everything went horribly white.


	5. Chapter 3: Dear Ainsley

_Dear Ainsley,_

_Dear does not seem fond enough a word to use for how I feel for you. I know how you feel about us putting our love down on paper. I know the danger. If you choose to burn this as you have all the ones you wrote me, I will not mind it. I do not need a trinket to know your love. I hope you do not need one to know mine._

_When I was a child during the war, I dreamed of what life would be like after it. The Event, the flash in the sky, the first red morning, all of it is a haze to me, but I remember perfectly what I imagined the world would be after._

_I was a child, remember, everything was coated in a kind of innocence, but I imagined a world where everyone laid down their arms. When we were hiding in the tunnels, I imagined a life where I could lay out under the stars. Most of all, I imagined a time when I would have a friend. I don’t mean just a child I met in our travels through the tunnels. I’ve told you before how they came and went. There was little point in remembering their names, they were always leaving or we were. My parents moved us so no one would find us. No one did, not even any good people. It was the most lonely feeling, knowing that everyone was temporary. That everything I had was temporary._

_But this is a love letter, not a lament._

_The point is, dearest Ainsley, I imagined a time when I would have someone to hold on to. Someone who would be there, someone to look up at those elusive stars with. Someone who would not just leave. I did not know it would be you, but I always dreamed of someone._

_Then we met._

_You had your hair pulled back, two small braids framing your face, and the rest loose. You wore gold the day I saw you. Do you remember? I remember every detail._

_I saw you walk out onto the balcony of the Aria, your gold dress caught the light of the red sunset and your hair flowed through the wind. You leaned on the rail and looked out over the ocean. You looked so sad, that day Ainsley._

_I recognized a quality of sadness that I knew. I was sad too. Some people think of Nicholas Endicott as a hero, but we know him better than most. He found me in those tunnels. He became a constant, but it was no dream. He made me a soldier before I was old enough to know what that meant. He snatched me out of poverty, but he put me into servitude._

_He did the same to you, didn’t he?_

_Oh, Ainsley, you always accuse me of being so morose, and here I am, ruining the mood of the one love letter I may ever get to sneak to you, but I need you to understand. I need you, Ainsley Whitly. I love you in a way no one ever has, the way you love me._

_The celebration of the new moon, the night before you are to marry Endicott, the entire fleet will be focused on the party. A masquerade across every airship. (Could you imagine our childhood selves if we could see us now? Living like this in luxury?). Everyone will be distracted. We will never get a chance like this again, Ainsley. I am rambling, you accuse me of doing that frequently too. Let me make myself plain:_

_Run away with me, Ainsley._

_On the Eve of your wedding when everyone will be in masks. Find me. We will finally leave this place behind. We can make ourselves a life. We can find the freedom we never knew._

_Ainsley, my love. Run away with me. Be mine, forever._

_Love, yours always,_

_Jin_

JT dragged Bright’s limp body over the edge of the building as the creature fell free toward the ground. “You with me? Hey? You with me?”

He heard stuttering breaths from the man and shifted quickly, half carrying, half dragging him. It was a second before he felt Malcolm take any of the weight. JT took off as fast as he could, going down two flights of stairs. He reached the basement of the building and found a heavy metal door. JT lowered Malcolm, half dropping him. He heard a cry of pain but pushed past it. He turned, seeing two more creatures barreling down the stairs after him. JT slammed the door shut. He and Bright plunged into darkness. The creatures hit the door, scratching at it. JT held his breath, but the door did not give. He let out his breath. There were no windows, and the air felt stale.

“Bright?” he said into the darkness.

“There’s a…there’s flint in my bag,” Bright said, words scraping-out past the pain in his voice.

“Where’s your bag?” JT kneeled where he sensed Bright’s presence. He felt a hand touch his ankle, finding him in the dark. Then a bag was pushed against his boot. JT took it, riffling through it. Metal clanged against the concrete floor as he sent scavenged material scattering in all directions. “I can’t find it.”

“It’s a device,” Bright said, “Feels like a…like a box but with gears.” JT felt around until he found something similar to what Bright was describing.

“How the hell do I use this.”

“It’s flint, but…mechanized. Just pull the release.”

JT cursed, fumbling with it, trying to find anything to pull. He felt his finger flick over something and frowned. He lowered it. The clockwork gears whirred, loud in the closed space. A spark flickered to life and then caught, creating a small flame. “Damn,” JT said. The flicker was less light than he could get from a candle, but as his eyes adjusted, he could just make out Bright’s pinched features. “Would it be too much to ask that you were carrying firewood?”

“Funny,” he said, “Maybe look for something flammable?”

“Right,” JT said, “In this closed in space.” He stood up, letting the small flame reveal parts of the little room as he walked around. It was a relatively empty space, probably used for storage at one time. There was dirt and debris, but nothing much of substance. JT paused, the light catching on something in the corner. He approached, sending a small metal cup skittering away from his boot. He frowned, seeing a dirty mattress. “I think someone was living down here, in the before.”

“The war left a lot of people homeless,” Bright said. His voice sounded off.

“Yeah, I know,” JT replied. He did know, better than most. JT frowned and kicked the mattress. The mattress let out a violent hiss.

JT jumped back.

“What the hell is that?” Bright asked.

“Stay there,” JT replied. In the light, he saw holes all across the mattress, each ragged as if they were chewed through. He gently nudged the mattress again with his boot. A rat’s head stuck up through the hole. Then another head. The creature crawled out, its two rat-like heads snapping and hissing. JT took a step back. Then another one of the small beasts crawled out from a different hole.

“Dammit,” he heard Bright say behind him, “Careful, those fuckers are mean.”

“Thank you for that insight. I was about to pet them,” JT deadpanned. “They have to have a hole to get out of here somewhere.” He aimed the flint their way, wondering if he could scare them toward the hole with the fire. He squeezed the release again, trying to cause a spark.

“JT, don’t!” Bright shouted.

The flint shot fire at the mattress. Tiny hisses started, and six two-headed rats skidded out of the mattress, crawling over each other to run for a hole in the opposite corner.

“Well, I’m never going to unsee that.”

“JT…” Bright started. The mattress caught fire, flames leaping up. “Don’t put it out, we just need to control it.”

“How do you propose we do that?” JT said, not that he was any more certain he could put it out if he was trying to. There was already smoke starting to fill the room.

Bright coughed, “Here…” A sword came skidding across the floor toward JT. “Cut off the part that’s on fire before the rest catches. Then we…we need….” He heard Bright digging through the scavenged material. He held up metal pot. “We’ll just put part of it in here.”

“Keep ourselves warm by the light of a burning rat-infested mattress? You do know how to show a guy the nice things in life.”

“We aim to please when you come visit the uninhabited land,” Bright replied. He still sounded wrong, but lucid. JT would take that for now. He cut off the burning piece of the mattress, ignoring the horrible smell, and tossed it into Bright’s pot. Malcolm covered it with a holey metal lid. It did nothing for the smell, but it gave off more light than the flint mechanism, and at least the whole mattress was not going up in flame. JT glared at the disgusting thing. He grabbed another one of Malcolm’s scavenged pieces and stuffed it in the rat hole to block their tiny monsters from returning to investigate.

JT let out a breath. “Damn, that was…horrible.”

“Yeah, not ideal,” Bright replied. In the light they managed to create, JT watched Bright lean his shoulder against the wall, closing his eyes. The light was casting strange shadows across the other man’s features, but JT could still see the lines of pain.

“How bad is it?”

“I’ll live,” Bright replied.

“Not really an answer,” JT walked across the room and kneeled down beside him. “Let me see.” Bright nodded without opening his eyes. It did not exactly fill JT with confidence. He reached for the other man’s shirt, his hands hesitating before touching him. “Can I…?”

Bright opened his eyes and looked at him. He gave a weak nod. JT slowly lifted Bright’s shirt from the hem. He felt it sticking to his back, and Bright gave a hiss of pain. JT felt the warm liquid on his hands. He lifted it over Bright’s head as gentle as he was able and tossed it aside. Blood ran down the man’s back from vicious claw marks, but they were nothing compared to the bite on his shoulder.

“How bad?” Bright asked, leaning his head against the wall. JT touched his shoulder. Malcolm let out a horrible sound, shrinking from him. The wound was hot to the touch.

“Fuck…Bright, I think their fangs are poisonous.”

“Wow, damn.” Bright shivered. “There are bandages in my pack.” JT gave a nod, going back over to the stuff he left scattered on the floor. He knew if the bite was poisonous, there may not be anything he could do. He knew the other man understood this too. JT chose not to acknowledge it.

As a soldier for Endicott, he spent a lot of time ignoring the obvious. He would do that now. He would keep pushing forward until it turned out he was wrong, or until Malcolm Bright died. JT felt the thought nudge his brain and shoved it away. Not now. He could not think that now. He found the bandages and removed his own pack, pulling out a skin of water. He returned to Bright, offering him the drink. Bright took it from him and JT watched his hand shake all the way to his lips. Bright took a deep drink and then offered it back, struggling to keep it from spilling. JT removed it from his fingers, pouring a little bit in his hand. He gently rubbed the water across the wounds on Bright’s back. The other man hissed, arching away from him. “I have to get it as clean as possible.”

“I know,” Bright said through gritted teeth, “There’s a salve in the bag.” JT searched through the discarded materials again until he found a small bottle. He lifted it, showing Bright. He waited for the slight nod before uncorking it. The air was filled with a floral aroma. JT sniffed it suspiciously.

“And you want this on your wounds?”

“That’s what it’s for,” Bright replied. JT hesitantly poured some on his finger and began rubbing it into the wounds. Bright flinched in pain, then forced himself still. JT watched the other man’s muscles twitching with the tension of it. He looked away, focusing on unrolling the bandages.

“Can you lift your arms?”

Bright gave the barest nod. JT wrapped the bandages around his torso. He focused on the movement, ignoring the closeness. It was strange, intimate in a way he did not understand. Maybe Bright felt it too. As he wrapped the man’s shoulder, Bright craned his neck to try and see JT’s face.

“Didn’t think you’d spend your night caring for a wounded pirate, did you?”

“Something tells me you’re prone to surprising people,” JT said. He had no idea why he said something like that until Bright raised an eyebrow.

“You haven’t exactly proven yourself predictable either,” Bright said as JT tied off the bandages. The pirate turned toward JT without moving back. “You saved my life.”

“I couldn’t let you die.”

“Yes, you could have,” Bright replied, “You easily could have. Most people would.” JT watched the flames flicker in Bright’s clear eye, watched them reflect off his clockwork one. “Thank you.” JT turned away from him.

Bright coughed. JT’s eyes jerked back toward him. “You alright?”

Bright held up his hand. He started coughing over and over. JT reached over to pat his back and froze, not wanting to touch the wounds.

“JT…the smell…”

JT paused, sniffing the air. It smelled like smoke, but something else. He looked at the pot, watching the mattress burn. “Do you think the rats make it poisonous to burn?”

“I’m starting to think,” he coughed, “That burning mattresses might be causing us to breathe in carcinogens.” 

“What?” JT looked at him.

“Put it out,” Bright coughed. JT turned over the pot, stomping out the flames. With the last embers out, they plunged into darkness.

“At least we know the room isn’t airtight,” he said. He closed his eyes and opened them, but the darkness did not change. JT knew it would not, but the instinct remained. Slowly, he lowered himself back to the ground. He listened as Bright’s coughing slowed. Then the other man was silent.

The darkness and the silence mixed together. “What do we do now?”

“I have to go back out there,” Bright said, “My sister is out there.”

“There’s a storm and a herd of monsters out there, no way we’re opening that door right now,” JT replied, “Besides, if you try to find her, who's to say you don’t just lead those things right to her.” He looked into the darkness toward where he knew Bright was. “What was your plan if you got separated?”

“Head back to Gil’s.” Bright’s voice sounded tired. JT could picture him laying his head against the wall, letting that messy hair fall into his eyes. JT blinked away the mental image. Why was he imagining what Bright looked like at all?

“Then that’s what we do once the storm passes.”

“And how do we know when the storm has passed?”

“We give it a few hours,” JT replied.

“In a few hours, it will be dark,” Bright replied, “I don’t know what you Floaters know about being landside, but Seafarers do not go out after dark. You think those mountain lions were bad, you have no idea what’s out there at night.”

“So,” JT said, glaring toward Bright’s voice and hoping his expression carried with the force of his words, “We wait till morning.”

“In a freezing death box,” Bright replied.

“I think death is outside the box,” JT replied, then his mind tripped over one of the words. “Freezing?”

“It’s cold.”

JT frowned. There was a little chill to the room. It felt damp, but freezing? “Come on, pirate,” JT said, “It has to get colder than this out on your water.”

“Not my water, no one owns the water,” Bright replied, “I’m not Endicott.”

“Yeah? What does that mean?” JT asked.

“Owning the sky,” Bright replied, “As if anyone can own the air.”

“It’s a metaphor,” JT said, “And why do you pirates call us Floaters?”

“Why do you Floaters call us pirates?” Bright shot back, and this time JT heard the shake to his words.

“You really are that cold?”

“Damn, I’m cold. It’s cold, not everything has to be a masculinity contest!”

“It’s not,” JT replied, his tone sharp, then he took a breath, “Bright, it’s not cold.”

“What?” asked the voice in the dark, sounding smaller than it had before.

“Are you freezing, or are you being dramatic as hell?”

“I’m not dramatic,” Bright said, then, “I’m really cold.”

JT took a breath, crawling toward him in the darkness. He stopped when his hand touched Bright’s boot. The soldier sat back. “Can I touch you?”

“Your hands were all over me a second ago.”

“Why do you have to fucking say things like that?” JT asked, but his hand still hesitated, “Can I touch you?”

“Yes,” Bright said. JT moved his hand up from Bright’s boot, feeling his arm. He used it to guide his hand up toward Bright’s neck. He felt the other man’s muscles tense under his touch. “I’m just…trying to find your face.”

“It’s fine,” Bright said, his words a bit too fast. JT touched his neck, then lifted his hand, pressing it against Bright’s forehead. He felt the man lean into the touch.

He felt the heat there.

“Dammit, the poison.” JT lowered his hand back to Bright’s shoulder, laying it against the bandaged wound. Bright hissed in pain, but JT got his answer. The wound was hot. “We have to try and go back.”

“No,” Bright said, “You’re right. If we go back now, we’re dead.”

“You might die without moving from here,” JT replied.

“We don’t know that, not yet.”

“Yeah, great plan. Let’s wait and see if you keel over before deciding if we need to head back.”

Bright caught his wrist. JT had no idea how he did that in the dark. “We can’t, JT. If we stay, we have a chance. If we go out there, we’re both dead.” Slowly, Bright dropped JT’s wrist.

Bright was right, and they both knew it.

JT sat there for a second more. “You’re sitting in a damp basement without a shirt on.”

“Do all soldiers have your skill with observation?”

JT shrugged off his jacket, “Here.” He touched the jacket to Bright’s shoulder. Slowly, fumbling in the dark, he helped Malcolm pull it on.

“I can’t believe you got me in uniform.”

“I’m sure you look ridiculous,” JT replied. “Help?”

“Yeah,” Bright said, but the slight shiver to his voice gave him away. JT frowned.

“Is there something I can…”

“Just keep talking?” Bright said before the words could fully leave JT’s lips. JT shifted until he was leaning on the wall beside Bright.

“You do love talking.”

“Ha,” Bright said, “I used to be a quiet kid.”

“You, quiet? Seems hard to believe.”

“Not always, I talked a lot,” Bright said, his tone going a bit off, “Then I stopped.”

“Why?”

Bright was silent for a moment, “You don’t want to go down that path. Here there be tragic backstory.”

“Do you always deflect with humor?”

“No,” Bright replied, “Sometimes I deflect with pointing out the dangers of a burning mattress.”  
JT gave a slight huff of a laugh. “How did you figure out the mattress?”

“A woman I know, runs a commune,” he said. “Her mother was a scientist before. She passed down everything she knew about caring for the planet.”

“No one before the Event cared about the planet.”

“Not true,” Bright replied, and JT detected something protective in his tone. “People cared. Scientists cared, but other people didn’t listen. They didn’t want to be responsible for their choices, so they pretended that those choices had no consequences, but there were always people who cared. My friend’s mother never got to see it, but her daughter created a place where people care. It’s beautiful.”

“The world’s already fucked,” JT replied, “Trying to clean up landside is a fool’s errand.”

“Did King Endicott teach you that?”

“Commander Endicott. And I have my own thoughts.”

“Oh, I know,” Bright said, and it felt weighty, full of something JT could not guess. “But then sometimes, you sound like a propaganda pamphlet.”

“Why do you hate the sky so much?”

“I don’t hate the _sky_ ,” he said, “I hate the kingdom Endicott built in it.” Bright’s voice hardened, “I hate the way his greedy hands reach out and take whatever he wants. We have a chance, a real chance to start over. We can make something beautiful, but people like Endicott don’t want that. Oh, they tell you that’s what they want, but the only thing Endicott cares about creating are the structures of power that benefit him. And just like every other dictator before him, he does that by demonizing groups of people that are different from him. He promises society. He promises safety, but the only thing he creates is oppression.”

“Don’t lecture a Black man who remembers life before the Event about oppression,” JT replied.

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Bright replied, “I know you’ve had experiences I never will. You remember the world before, and I don’t.” There was a pause, then Bright spoke again, “But my point stands.”

“What point?” JT replied, “You say you want a new version of the world? That’s what Endicott is doing. It’s not perfect, but it is better than no structure at all.”

“Is it? Is creating something new what you really think he’s doing? Endicott may have shuffled the cards so he comes out on top, but he’s still playing with the same deck.”

“Quite the pirate metaphor.”

“These people are the same people they were before the Event. If there is a way they can take all the power and leave everyone else with none, they will.”

“You haven’t even set foot in the City, but you have a lot of opinions about it.”

“Would I be welcome there?” Bright asked. He grabbed JT’s hand again, pulling it up until JT’s fingers brushed the edge of the metal on his face. The soldier jerked his hand back. In a flash, JT pictured him, the way the metal meshed with his skin.

He thought of a person he knew, an older woman in the City. _“The abominations they do,” she had said to him many years before, “grafting metal to their skin. It’s inhuman.”_

JT hesitated long enough that Bright went on.

“Believe me, Tarmel,” Bright said, “I may not know your Endicott, but I’ve known a man like him. I have no desire to go from one prison to another.”

JT let out a breath, feeling the frustration in his gut. “Like I said, it may not be perfect, but I have a seat at the table. We have been given a chance to make something new. Forgive me for wanting to be a part of it. Instead of removing myself from it entirely.”

Bright laughed, but the anger was undercut by the way the sound shivered through his voice. “Do you have a seat at the table, JT?” he asked. “Or are you doing Endicott’s dirty work?”

JT started to snap back, when Bright broke the tension by groaning. “What is it?”

“Just…I just need to lie down,” Bright replied. All of the heat went out of his voice. He sounded young and hurt. JT heard the other man’s clothes rustle as he moved. He could picture Bright, curled up in a ball.

“You still cold?”

“I’ll live,” Bight said, his teeth chattering together, and JT was suddenly certain that this Seafarer would say he was fine all the way to his deathbed.

“Hold still.”

“Why?” Bright asked, “So you can put me out of my misery more easily in the darkness?”

“Exactly,” JT replied dryly, “Would hate to exert effort to end you.” He shifted closer, “Can I touch you?” he asked again.

“Yes,” Bright said, and the fact that he did not use that as an opportunity for a comeback worried JT more than anything. He laid down beside Bright, putting an arm around him. The other man went rigid for a second in surprise, then before JT could move away, Bright burrowed into him. “Why are you so warm?”

“I’m not warm,” JT said, “You’re ridiculously cold.”

“Both can be true, JT,” he said. JT felt the other man shiver in his arms. He tightened his arm slightly and felt a wave of protectiveness that went beyond the simple need to survive. JT wanted to make sure this man was safe. This was a feeling he thought he left behind in childhood when he was separated from the most important person in his life. He could not fathom a reason he would feel it toward this man, now. “Talk to me?” Bright said, “It’s too dark.”

“You aren’t afraid of the dark, a pirate like you?” JT asked.

“Hate that term,” Bright replied, “And I don’t like it when it’s dark inside a place. It’s different when you’re on the deck of a ship, and you know the air and ocean are around you. This place feels small.” The man shivered again, but JT knew it had nothing to do with cold. “Brings back memories.”

“You weren’t born on the ocean?” JT asked.

“How young do you think I am?” Bright asked, “No. I was born on land, but I don’t remember the Event. After that, I lived some time on the sea, and some time at the Pub.” JT knew this was a story that was not a story. There were worlds of silence between the words he said.

“I remember the Event,” JT said, also saying both more and less than he meant. “And some of the war before it.”

“My sister remembers the war too,” Bright said, “A little of it.” JT felt Bright stir slightly, but he heard the way Bright’s voice was getting distant. “She had a brother before me.”

“Hm, we all had family before,” JT said, “Family used to mean something different before the Event, to some people at least. There used to be more rigid structures, more pressure on blood relations.”

“I know,” Bright said, sleep weighing down his voice, “We’re not all ignorant, you know, us pirates.”

“I thought the term pirate was offensive?”

“I’m allowed,” Bright replied. “My sister’s brother was named JT too.” It was soft, the words spoken in a haze between sleep and awake, and with them Bright faded completely. With them, JT was suddenly far more awake. He went completely still, not wanting to wake the other man and wanting to shake answers out of him at the same time.

Family was different after the Event, but for some people, it was different before the Event too. JT remembered before the Event, but he was not old enough to remember a time without war. Did his blood family die? Did they go missing or give him away? He did not remember, and any means to find out went up in actual smoke. JT’s first memories put him firmly in the orphanage. It was not a place of nightmares, the people who ran it genuinely cared for the children, but war is an orphan-maker. JT became one of many other children in the home, and some of them had far more needs than he did. A well-behaved kid is easier to ignore than one who needs more obvious care. JT was self-sufficient at a young age, and because of that, he often was overlooked. Danielle never overlooked him. The moment she entered the orphanage, she became glued to his side. His little sister. She became his entire world.

In the dark room, beside Malcolm Bright, JT closed his eyes and remembered.

_Danielle, a vibrant child, running barefoot through the hallways of the orphanage. JT chased her, their laughter drowning out everything around them. Danielle hid in the cupboard. She always hid in the cupboard. So, JT pretended he could not find her. After a moment of creating noises to sound like he was looking through every possible spot in the room, he pulled open the door.“Boo!”_

_Danielle laughed, coming out to grab hold of him._

_Her face lit up strangely. It was nighttime, but a bright light reflected in her eyes. They both turned toward the window._

_They both saw the flash. The Event._

In the dark room beside Bright, adult JT squeezed his eyes tighter, trying to block out a light in his memories.

The Event shattered the world and rendered families apart. Family meant something different after the Event because all at once, so many people lost everyone they had. People died, people went missing. Eight billion people became a few hundred overnight. The vast world became uninhabitable except for small portions of the water and of course, as Endicott would realize, the sky. People built what they could from what was left. Some even built new families. 

It sounded like Bright found the pub owner and the pirate woman.

Who had JT found? His fellow soldiers, is the answer he would give if the question came from someone else, but alone inside his head, it rang hollow. JT had no one.

But Bright’s sister once had a brother named JT.

He shook the idea away from his mind. JT was a common enough name before the Event removed concepts like common names. JT could stand for dozens of things. Bright’s sister could be anyone. JT lived in a world of scarcity and drought, he could not afford to traffic in hope.

JT closed his eyes once more and prayed he did not dream, but it was a long time before sleep came for him.

_-_-_

JT woke up and wondered if it was morning. In the impenetrable darkness, it could be any time. His body felt stiff from the ground, and he knew time must have passed. He moved slightly and froze. There was a person in his arms. Not any person, but Malcolm Bright.

JT’s mind briefly halted. He had slept with Malcolm Bright. JT shook the thought of, not slept with. Slept next to.

Then the events of the previous night came back. His breath stopped again. JT shook Bright’s shoulder. “Hey, wake up. Hey, Bright?” he asked. His grip tightened on the other man’s arm. He fumbled in the dark, trying to find his face. Fevered heat met his touch. For a second, he was relieved not to find a cold, lifeless body in his arms. Then worrying over the fever kicked in. “Bright?”

“Wha?” Bright asked, rolling over, “Cold. Cold.” Without waking up, he snuggled closer against JT.

“Wake up,” JT said, using the voice that commanded soldiers.

“Where…who?” Bright said, sounding like he was stirring out of sleep. “JT? What time is it?”

“I don’t know, let me consult one of your mashed together clockwork devices in this pitch-black room.”

“Not mashed together, Nico’s clocks are intricate,” Bright said. JT sighed, the fever may have felt serious, but at least Bright was coherent enough to argue. “We have to get out of here. We have to see if it’s light. We have to meet my sister.”

JT touched his arm, “The only thing we have to do is see if it’s safe and get you back to the Pub before I have to carry you.” He pushed himself up, pulling Bright with him. He felt the other man teeter and lean into his side. He moved with Bright to the door. “Lean on the wall?”

“I love when you get pushy,” Bright said, and JT was going to attribute that one to Bright’s fever. He leaned his shoulder into the door and shoved it open. Red, morning light spilled into the room from the staircase. JT blinked as his eyes slowly adjusted. He noticed no immediate signs of danger, and with his senses primed to listen for any change, JT focused on the smaller details. The door to their makeshift bunker had claw marks up and down its length. The stairwell itself was wet from rain, with tree branches thrown into it. “Must have been a hell of a storm,” JT said, “Probably scared the monsters off.”

“We better hope so,” Bright said. His voice was closer than JT expected, and he turned, nearly knocking noses with Bright, who was leaning into his airspace to look at the damage as well. JT pulled back at about the same moment he saw Bright’s mechanical eye. The other man’s expression shifted and closed off.

“Forget for a while that I’m horribly disfigured?”

“You’re impossible,” JT said, looking away. He felt defensive, but had it not been a little bit true? For a while, Bright was just a person he could talk to, not someone from an entirely different world. “Come on,” he said, “We need to get back.”

_-_-_

Ainsley walked into the Captain’s cabin of the Aria, where Endicott stood, his arms spread out as he leaned against the window and surveyed his fleet. She marveled at the way this man could take up the space around him. He knew all of this belonged to him, and he had no desire to hide it. She approached him slowly, coming up to his side. Outside the window of the lead ship, she watched all the airships under Endicott’s command flying in formation. The way it caught the fresh morning light could have been beautiful, she thought, if she did not know so much about it.

Endicott did not glance at her. He merely turned and walked to his captain’s chair. He flourished his cloak and took the seat before he bothered to look her way. “You were up early,” he said, and Ainsley knew he referred to the fact that she was not in his arms when he woke up that morning.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, “I went for a walk.”

“Something troubling you?” her fiancée asked. “You know I can give you anything.”

Ainsley smiled at him. She knew he could give her any material thing if he wanted to. The City in the Clouds had the finest things left in the world, and they were always on the verge of some new marvel, but she also knew he did not have what she needed. Endicott could not give her peace of mind, not when it was thoughts of him that kept her awake. “With you, I want for nothing.”

“Nothing?” he asked, an eyebrow raised, “Yet, you do look for comforts elsewhere.”

Ainsley felt cold, “You mean because I went for a walk.”

“I mean because you are sleeping with one of my soldiers,” Endicott said. He held up a letter, the paper balanced between his fingers. Ainsley knew that handwriting, and it made the cold spread further through her. Jin. Endicott offered it to her, but she did not move. “Ainsley,” he said, the words a purr. “I’ve told you, there’s nothing that happens in my City that I don’t know about.” He gave her a look that was paternalistic. She realized at once, he was not angry, and it did not relieve her at all.

“You…”

“Have known since the beginning. The first time you engaged with Sergeant Jin Lee? Yes.” He stood, folding his hands behind his back, and walked over to her. She squared her shoulders, refusing to flinch at his approach, but he only looked at her. “Ainsley, it doesn’t matter.”

Every time she slept with Jin, she imagined a thousand different responses Endicott would have if he caught them. None of them was this.

“It…doesn’t matter?” she repeated.

Endicott put a finger under her chin and tipped it up. “Not in the slightest. Ainsley, darling,” he said her name in a way that made her feel infinitely small. “It doesn’t matter where you lay your body or who you chose to lay your body on. At the end of the day, you will always come back to me, because I. Own. You.” He broke each word apart as he said them, leaning in close. “Ainsley, I am building an Empire. I don’t have time for your games.”

“I’m not playing games,” Ainsley replied, clenching her fist, her voice steadying with her anger.

“Aren’t you?” Endicott replied, “A Sergeant? As if you would actually care about anyone with so little power. No, you don’t care about him. Even if you want to. You aren’t built for love like that. You are much too ambitious.” He shook his head, smirking as if the very idea amused him. “You and I are not romantics, Ainsley.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

Endicott tilted his head, raising an eyebrow, “You climbed me to get here. In every meaning of the phrase. You did well, really. Your ambition allowed you to leverage your beauty for power. You played your part well.” He motioned his arms to the fleet. “Look where you raised yourself and your mother with your scheming.” Endicott met her eyes, “But don’t forget. You have all of this because I allow you to have it. I hold your secret, daughter of the Surgeon of the Sea. I know who you are. You walk through this City as if your history was erased by the Event just like everyone else, but that can all end like that,” he snapped his fingers, “If I decide I want it to. So, find your pleasure where you want. It makes no difference to me, and at the end of the day, come back and play your part.” With that, he stepped back, and Ainsley felt he had released her even though he was not touching her. Endicott dropped the letter into her hand. “You can go.” Ainsley felt the dismissal in her bones. She turned stiffly and walked out the door, clutching Jin’s letter in her hands.

She did not start shaking until she was alone in the hallway.


	6. Chapter 4: Dear JT

_Dear JT,_

_I might have lost him. My brother, my other brother, is missing. There is a storm raging outside the Pub, and we were attacked by monsters in the ruins of a city. We got separated. We swore if we got separated, we would both head back to the Pub. I did as I swore I would, but he’s not here. Malcolm isn’t back yet. Gil threatened to barricade the door if I went out searching. He insists that Mal knew the plan as well as I did, and he would have found a hiding place if he could not get back. Going out there would just endanger me and mean Gil would have two people to search for in the morning. That is what Gil says, but I see the worry in his eyes._

_JT, you don’t know Mal. I didn’t find him until years after I lost you. I don’t know what you would think of him if you did know him, but if I could give you any of these letters, you would know how much Mal means to me. I can’t lose him like I lost you._

_I thought writing you would help. Nothing helps._

_I can’t lose him too._

_Dani_

_-_-_

The way back felt longer than it seemed before, and Malcolm was not talking. At first, JT touched him to get him steady again or help him over a fallen branch. Then, JT found himself reaching out to touch Bright to assure himself the man was still alright. Malcolm Bright was quiet, and JT found his silence unnerving. He watched Bright’s focus tighten, narrowing to the few steps ahead of him. JT watched the other man and knew every ounce of Bright’s energy was going into not falling over.

“We need to rest,” JT said.

“If I sit, I won’t get back up,” Bright said, still trudging ahead. He stumbled over a tree root, and JT caught his arm. He felt the fever heat radiating off Bright. JT looked down into Bright’s eyes and registered the pain covered with determination. “We have to keep going, JT. Please.”

JT nodded, but this time, he did not let Bright go. He walked with the other man, and little by little, he felt Bright lean on him. They kept walking. Then JT shifted his arm under Bright’s arms, taking more of the other man’s weight.

“We’re almost there,” JT said, as he felt Bright’s head thump against his shoulder. He looked down. Those determined eyes were no longer open. “Bright?” he said. JT cursed, pulling Bright into his arms. He felt the man fall bonelessly against him, and JT picked up speed. He sprinted with Bright the last length of the journey until he saw the retracting bridge ahead.

_-_-_

Gil spotted them the moment they came around the turn of the forest. He pulled a clockwork contraption from his pocket and fired it into the air, a flare shot up, sparkling the sky with a burst of light. “I have him!” He shouted if Dani was close enough to hear his voice. He took off toward the figure of the Air Rider carrying his son.

_-_-_

Bright remembered the huffing of JT’s breath as he ran with Bright in his arms. He remembered the man’s voice, softly promising, “Almost there.” Later, he remembered Gil’s hands on his face, his worried eyes.

He remembered nothing else.

Bright woke when the red light from the window had gone soft with the coming night. He watched Gil light a candle beside the bed. “You’re awake,” he said, glancing at Bright. “Hungry?” Gil held up a bowl, steam and the savory scent of rosemary coming off it.

Malcolm groaned slightly, “Not really.”

Gil sat the bowl down on the table and took a seat on the edge of the bed, watching him. “What do you remember?”

“I…got separated from Dani. There was a storm and mountain lions,” Bright said, finding the scattered memories as he said them. “I got bit by one. I got…” The memories of JT came back to him all at once. “I got rescued.”

“The mountain lion’s fangs were venomous,” Gil said. He dipped a cloth in a bowl of water, gently ringing it out as he spoke. “You’ve been in and out all day.”

“I don’t remember any of it,” Bright said. He saw the haunted look on Gil’s face and knew it was something his surrogate father wished he did not remember either. Bright started to push himself up, worry hitting him in a wave, “Dani was out there too. Dani!”

Gil pushed him back down gently, “Shh,” he said, nodding. Bright turned the direction he indicated and saw Dani asleep in the chair at his side. “She was awake all night worrying. It was everything I could do to keep her from running out in the storm after you.” Bright saw something like guilt in his surrogate father’s eyes. He caught Gil’s hand.

“Gil, you couldn’t have helped me. Either of you. You did the right thing. You followed the plan you taught us.”

“Maybe,” Gil replied, putting the cloth on Bright’ forehead, “But that doesn’t make it easier.” Bright watched his eyes soften. “I’m glad you’re back, kid.”

“I love you too, Gil,” he said. Gil cupped the back of his neck.

A thud from downstairs distracted them from the moment.

“Something wrong?” Malcolm asked.

“More Air Riders came while you were asleep. Five of them staying here now,” Gil said, “A full Pub is a noisy place.”

“More Floaters? What do they want?”

Gil shook his head, “I don’t know.”

Malcolm narrowed his eyes, “What is it? Gil? There’s something else.”

The older man sat still on the bed as if any move might spook Bright. Ironically, Malcolm felt the observation putting him on edge. “I heard them talking about the City.”

“And?” Bright pushed, feeling like he would lose it if the words did not come out quicker.

“Apparently, Commander Endicott is getting married.”

Bright felt the tension go out of him, “Lot of build-up for that,” he replied, “So, Endy found someone willing to sell their soul to marry him? I guess there’s hope for any of us.”

“Malcolm,” Gil said. “It’s Ainsley.”

Bright froze. Not just his body, but his whole mind went completely still.

“Kid?”

“Oh,” he said. Malcolm laid down, rolling over, his back to Gil. “So, she’s safe.”

“Bright…”

“I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

Bright felt Gil’s hand on his shoulder, felt the gentle squeeze, then listened as the man’s footsteps retreated from the room.

That night Malcolm’s dreams were memories.

_“An old friend, Endicott, a man I knew during the war, is building something in the sky,” Jessica said. She was a young mother, her face remained unaged by living through the war, but her eyes held the pain of it. Malcolm watched her walk across the room and grab Gil’s hands. “I can convince him, I’m sure I can. We can go with him, Gil.”_

_Back then, the Pub was nothing more than a vision for the abandoned lighthouse between a ravine and mountains. Gil left the overcrowded ship to try and build something in it. Jessica followed him off the ship, holding Malcolm’s hand, Ainsley perched on her hip._

_“Jess,” Gil said, “What about the Pub? A safe place for anyone who comes through.”_

_“You mean the sitting target?” Jessica said, “Anyone can come here for safety? What about our safety, Gil.” Her voice dropped at the ‘our.’ Malcolm was too little then to read the emotions that flickered through Gil’s eyes, but he remembered the man pulling away from her hands._

_“I told you I will keep you safe. I won’t let him find you.”_

_“You can’t promise that,” Jessica replied. “The longer we sit still, the closer he gets. I can feel it.”_

_“And you think Endicott will protect you?” Gil said, “I’ve heard of him. I heard of him during the war. The things that man was willing to do to survive…” Even back then, when news traveled so slowly, there were so few people left alive that many who survived knew of each other._

_“Can you blame him?” Jessica replied, her hand on her hip, “You have no idea what I’d do to survive. To protect them.”_

_“You can’t let that man around your children, Jess,” Gil replied. “You’d just be trading one prison for another.”_

_In his memory, it happened the same night, but Bright thought that was almost too dramatic to be true. He imagined days passed, maybe weeks. Uninteresting days lost to the fog of childhood._

_Then the Scalpel attacked the Pub Between Worlds._

Bright sat upright in the bed, the dreamed memories falling off him along with the blanket. He felt a stab of pain from his injured arm, and it grounded him back in the present. He closed his eyes, burying his head in his hands.

“Your father?”

Malcolm looked up to see Dani, dressed for bed, standing beside him, her eyes full of worry. He gave a nod, and she motioned. Bright moved over, and she laid down on the bed beside him, close enough her arm touched his but not crowding him. She took his hand. Each gesture said a silent, “I’m here.”

He squeezed her hand, closing his eyes and pretending to sleep.

_-_-_

After JT let Gil take Bright from him, he returned to the Pub at a slower pace. This was not his worry to hold. Bright had a father and a sister to worry over him. So, JT could let it go. He owed this man nothing.

But JT found his mind returning to Bright over and over again.

JT got his own drink in the Pub, taking it to an empty table and nursing it slowly. His eyes went to the stairs every few seconds. Somewhere above, Malcolm Bright was with his family. Somewhere up above him, the man was sick and possibly dying.

It was not his battle, he reminded himself. Malcolm Bright was nothing to him, just another man he met in his travels. Just someone circumstances threw into his life. For a brief moment, their survivals were bound together. That time passed, and JT knew he had no further connection to Malcolm Bright.

The thought made him strangely sad.

JT met with the other Air Rider soldiers that arrived at the Pub while he was gone. As he spoke to them over drinks, the world grew hazy. It was the only thing keeping his worry at bay. Distraction gave way to drunkenness, and maybe that was why it took him so long to question why the newcomers were here. Each soldier knew only their own mission—a set of coordinators and the commission to map it out just as JT had.

Endicott was planning something on the mainland, and no one knew what the bigger picture could be.

The night grew dark before JT saw Gil reappear, coming down the stairs. JT stood, stumbling toward the man. “Arroyo.”

“Keep serving yourselves,” he replied, “I have nothing for you tonight.” JT would have collided headfirst with the man if one of Gil’s strong hands had not landed on his shoulder. “Or maybe go to bed, son. You look done in.”

“How’s…how’s Bright?”

Gil ran a hand over his face as if he could wipe the worry lines away. “Thanks to you, he’ll live. The fever broke a little while ago.” Then the man’s face softened even more, “Thank you, I can’t…if he had…” Gil shook his head, “Just thank you.”

“I’m glad he’s alright,” JT said, and he meant it. JT was not sure he could have concealed anything in that moment even if he wanted to.

Gil patted his shoulder, “Get some rest, soldier.”

JT stumbled up the stairs. He hesitated outside one of the shut doors, where could just hear muffled voices on the other side. Bright’s voice speaking with a woman that was likely his sister. JT pressed his hand to the wood for a moment. Then he stumbled his way to bed.

_-_-_

“Bright, Bright, wake up.”

He pulled back from sleep slowly to find Dani standing over him, eyes intense, wearing her captain's uniform.

“Why are you dressed?” he said, the haze of sleep clinging to his mind.

“We have to go, Bright, I’m sorry,” Dani said, “I know you need rest…”

He sat up, feeling the pull on his wounds, “I’m fine.”

“You always say that,” Dani replied, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“I’m always fine,” Malcolm replied, “What happened?”

“A scout sighted the Surgeon of the Sea down the coast.”

With those words, all lingering drowsiness fled.

_-_-_

JT woke with the red sun high in the sky outside his window. He groaned against the light. It took him several tries before he could force his heavy head off the pillow and twice as long to get dressed in his uniform and head down the stairs.

It was quiet in the pub. JT frowned as he headed over to the bar.

“You look like you need a hair of the dog,” Gil said, coming out of the kitchen.

“And some,” JT replied. He leaned backward on the counter, his eyes tracing the empty room around him. “Where are all your customers?”

“Your fellow soldiers headed out with the sunrise in different directions,” Gil replied. Even through the haze of his hangover, JT could see the way Gil’s eyes saddened.

“Bright?”

“Left, this morning.”

JT stood up, “He left? In his condition?”

“He will be just as cared for at sea by his sister as he would here now that he’s passed danger,” Gil replied.

JT felt something. Something in his gut that had nothing to do with the hangover. Something he did not know how to name. “Why would he leave in such a hurry?”

He watched Gil study him, but whatever the other man concluded was hidden behind his eyes. “The Surgeon of the Sea’s ship was spotted just down the coast early this morning. Not safe to have your ship moored undefended.”

JT frowned, “If the Surgeon is here again, it’s for a reason.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Gil replied, his tone holding layers JT could not guess at.

The soldier nodded to him, pushing off the bar. The Surgeon of the Sea this close to Endicott’s airspace was the kind of news the Commander wanted immediately. JT told himself that was why he packed his bag so quickly and returned to his Schooner.

This was not just to distract himself from Bright’s absence.

_-_-_

_Jin wanted to run away with her_ , Ainsley thought sitting at the vanity in her private cabin. Jin was a kind man. He was intelligent, funny, stunningly attractive. He had a way of pushing her, of believing she could be better. If she was a different woman than Endicott believed, she would run away with Jin.

If she was a different woman than Endicott believed, she would not hesitate.

Ainsley folded the paper, putting it into a little decorative box Endicott gave her. What did she have that Endicott had not given her?

She picked up the box, feeling its delicate weight in her hands. Ainsley threw it. It smashed violently against the frame of her bed.

“Well, I am glad to see you are spending your time before the wedding preparing yourself appropriately,” Jessica’s voice said from the doorway.

“Not now, mother,” Ainsley replied, angry heat rising up in her face.

Jessica walked across the room, gently cupping her daughter’s face, “Darling, you’re going to have worry lines.”

Ainsley pulled away, “Wouldn’t that be a problem. If I wasn’t beautiful, what would we trade for our freedom?”

Jessica sat on the edge of Ainsley’s bed, watching her. “Did something happen with Nicholas?”

“Nicholas happened,” Ainsley crossed her arms. “Don’t pretend you think he’s a good man, mother. We knew exactly who I was getting in bed with.”

Jessica frowned, “Ainsley, if you want out of this deal. We’ll get you out,” she said, her voice dropping to accentuate her point.

Ainsley scuffed, “Right. Of course. I can just turn my back on the most powerful man left in the world. A man who knows our secret and would willingly reveal it. A man who controls the sky. The Aria himself. Turn our back on society? And go where? And do what? And live how?” Ainsley hit each point with a gesture of her hands.

She saw the pain cross Jessica’s face, saw her look distant. “I didn’t choose this life for you. For us.” She smoothed out the wrinkles in the blanket on her daughter’s bed. “But if I hadn’t married your father and set us on this life of constant struggle.” Ainsley saw the tears in her mother’s eyes. Jessica put a hand to her lips. “If your brother were here…”

Jessica did not finish the sentence. Ainsley learned long ago there was no end to those sentences. Malcolm had been so young when he was lost to them. So young when their father stole him away in the night. Jessica did not know what kind of man Malcolm would have become if he were here, but in her mind, he was the answer to every problem. If Malcolm were here…

Ainsley felt her anger deflate. She walked over and sat beside Jessica, taking her mother’s hand in her lap. “I’m sorry, Mother. None of this is your fault. Alright? I will make things work with Endicott.”

Jessica patted Ainsley’s cheek, “Darling, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not asking, I’m telling you.” Ainsley hugged her mother, holding her tight. Just once, she wanted to be the answer to her mother’s problems instead of Malcolm.

_-_-_

“Bright?” Dani asked, she ducked under the rigging, climbing up onto the side of the ship beside him. She watched him in profile as he stared out over the dark water. Her eyes caught on the bottle dangling from one hand. “You’re supposed to be resting.” They set sail so early, light was just now hitting the water as the sun rose. Dani directed them to sail with the wind. They needed as much distance between them and the Surgeon of the Sea as possible. They could worry about their destination later.

“Why are we special?” Malcolm asked, turning to look at her.

“Are we special?” she asked, but he went on as if he never intended on waiting for her answer.

“Why did we get to survive the Event when so many people didn’t?” he asked her, looking back over the water. “My whole family survived. My father went on to become the terror of the sea, and my sister is marrying fucking Nicholas Endicott.” Bright went to throw the bottle, but even in his current state, Dani saw him rethink it. Material was too precious in this day and age to waste, even in anger. He dropped the bottle on the deck instead and then dropped his head into his hands. “We got to live, and this is what happens?”

Dani put a hand on his shoulder, “Bright, you just survived a horrible injury. You just learned your sister is still alive, and we saw…” she let the words drop. It was dangerous ground, bringing up the Surgeon of the Sea.

“What’s your point?”

“Now isn’t the time to rethink your entire perspective on life,” she said, “Or to find answers to unanswerable questions.” She squeezed his shoulder.

“And I’m not the person to find those answers,” Bright said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, and you didn’t mean that, but it’s true,” Bright said, “Gabrielle said I’m sick.” Dani stilled beside him.

“What?”

“My mind is,” Bright said, “Something they could have treated before the Event, but there’s nothing they can do now.”

“Gabrielle didn’t say that,” Dani replied, shaking her head.

“Not those words, but what does it matter?”

“It matters, Bright. Gabrielle wouldn’t say ‘nothing could be done’ for you. She wouldn’t believe that.” Dani squeezed his shoulder, “And neither do I.”

“Do you think whatever they could do before the Event could have made me capable of loving people like others do?”

Dani reached up and grabbed his chin, turning him to face her. “Hey. You are perfectly capable of love, just as much as anyone. Sex is not the same thing as love.” She released his face, “Is this about the guy who saved you?”

“He held me in his arms all night,” Bright said, “I…I don’t know him, but I miss him.” He shook his head, “He’s a Floater. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“It is,” Bright replied, “He stands for everything I’m against. I met him two days ago.”

She shrugged a shoulder, “So, maybe it doesn’t make sense. Who cares? Bright, you know as well as I do. This life is perilous and uncertain. Yesterday I wrote my brother a letter about you, about how I was worried I lost you. I keep writing him these letters he’ll never read, and when I couldn’t find you, I wrote him another one. Then I thought, what if I lost both of you, and all I had left was writing letters to my brothers I have lost, knowing they will never read them?”

“Dani…”

“The point is, Mal. Life is not certain.”

“You hate the Floaters as much as I do.”

“Endicott is recreating everything bad about the old world. Yes, I hate that. I hate him for doing it.”

“JT is one of his soldiers.”

“Yeah,” she replied, letting her hand drop from his shoulder as she looked up at the stars.

“Is this the part where you say it’s a little romantic? A real Romeo and Juliet?”

“I hope not,” Dani replied, “Damn, I hope you’re not that stupid.” That pulled a slight laugh from him, so she went on, “Of all the stories to survive the apocalypse? Two idiots who died over a crush.” She shook her head, “It’s a shame.” Bright laughed, and Dani pretended she did not notice him wiping away tears. “I don’t know about your Floater, Bright. If he really believes in all the things Endicott says…”

“Yeah.” They were silent a moment before he went on. “So, why do I still want to talk to him?”

“So, talk to him,” Dani said. “If it turns out he’s an irredeemable bastard who had a moment of weakness that led him to save you, wouldn’t it be better for you to know?”

“And if he isn’t an irredeemable bastard?”

“Well, then you’re in trouble.”

“Why?”

“Because, you have it bad, Bright.” Her first mate groaned, burying his head in his hands. She patted his shoulder. “Yeah.”

Bright squinted through his fingers, “You can’t tell Nico when we get there.”

“Oh, he’ll read it on you before we get within a mile of him.”

Maybe it was a little mean, but she did find it a little funny when he groaned and buried his face again.


	7. Chapter 5: Dear JT

_Dear JT,_

_This is ridiculous. I shouldn’t be writing you. I have no business writing you._

Bright stopped, tearing the part of the paper and tossing it. He started again.

_Dear JT,_

Bright ripped the paper again. Dear? Who was he?

_JT,_

Bright cursed, for the first time wondering if he should have sobered up before trying to pen the letter, but knowing he would lose his nerve. It was now or never.

_To JT,_

_Thank you. I know I left in a fever haze while you were asleep, and I was barely conscious myself. The last time I saw you was when you were carrying me, which is an awkward truth. This whole letter is awkward, and honestly, I am drunk, which my Captain and sister insists was a bad idea given the near-death poisoning hours ago. She would also probably say that only I could ramble in a letter._

_The point is, thank you._

_I would be dead, eaten by scorpion mountain lions or poisoned by them alone in a bunker somewhere. They would never find my body among all the other bodies from the old world. Edrisa—you don’t know her, but you would like her if you met her because everyone likes Edrisa—would say that there used to be ways to identify bodies even after they decayed. We don’t have that now. The dead become the nameless. I was almost nameless, a memory and a meal. But, as improbably as surviving the Event, you happened, and I survived again. I’ve survived more than my share of near-death experiences. I don’t deserve it, but I did. This time, I survived because you decided I was someone worth saving even though I am a pirate, and you are a Floater. You had no reason to save me. You gained nothing from it and risked yourself to do it. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, that thing you did, JT. Your Commander definitely wouldn’t approve. You are a resource to him, and I am a waste of clean air._

_But I didn’t write to fight with you. It’s so strange, I find myself wanting to fight with you just to keep you talking even when you are just a letter._

_That didn’t make sense, ignore that. I would scratch it out, but I’ve already wasted so much paper trying to get this right._

_I don’t understand why you did what you did._

_I don’t understand a single thing about you._

_There’s no way to end this letter. There really wasn’t a way to start._

_Malcolm Bright_

Bright closed the letter, letting wax drip onto the edge and stamping it with the seal Nico made him. He held the letter up, watching as Sunshine nipped at it. “Get this to Gil. He’ll know what to do with it. Or he won’t, and this will have been entirely pointless.” The clockwork dragon whirred quietly, taking the letter in her claws. She lifted off his arm and flew out the window of the cabin. He watched her travel across the sea.

Bright heard one of the crewmates whistle loudly. He stood. They were getting close. Nico’s Floating Forge traveled in a complicated pattern based on the movement of the stars. Hard enough to follow that he would avoid frequent raids, but for those he considered friends, he could always be found.

Bright left the cabin, sprinting up the deck even in his inebriated state. He overcorrected, nearly face-planting on the deck. Dani’s hand steadied him. “Nico’s going to love you showing up drunk in the mid-morning.”

“I’m not sure it didn’t switch to being hungover, even though I didn’t sleep,” Malcolm moaned.

“Well, you did nearly die yesterday, so who knows what kind of messed up you are,” she pointed out unhelpfully.

Bright started to answer, but shook his head, focusing on the structure in front of him as they drew closer.

Nico Stavros’ Floating Forge was a sight no matter how many times Bright found himself sailing up to dock at its port. There was always some new contraption made with scavenged goods rising from it on all sides, making the Forge look like nothing so much as a child learning to stack shapes. There was a chaos to Nico’s vision that was so uniquely him, as if the entire human-made island rose one day from his subconscious.

It was a beautiful chaos, the way Nico was beautiful and chaotic. There was a time Malcolm thought he loved Nico. A time when he wanted to be the kind of man Nico could want, but it had crashed as violently as a shipwreck.

Nico was sensual in a way Bright found himself out of sync with. His touch made Bright feel wrong even though he said he wanted it. Made him feel wrong even though Nico had been nothing but respectful, had never done anything without consent. The wrongness was inside him, Bright knew. The something missing he could not quite get to click.

That was part of what ended it, but Nico promised him that was not everything. Nico wanted sex, and Bright didn’t, but it was hardly the only way they did not work. They were incompatible chaos, Dani said later when he realized she was completely unsurprised things ended.

The gangplank landed with a thunk on the metal side of the Forge.

“You rotten group of low lives look terrible, even for scallywags,” said the man as he approached. Nico stood on the other side of the plank, pointing at them with his mechanical arm. The gears turned as he gestured. His cloak hung about his knee-high boots, with belts in all directions—around his hips, encircling his thigh, across his torso—holding tools and bits. He looked like a walking pile of scavenged refuse with a handsome face and devil-may-care swagger. “I mean him, not you Dani. You are radiant and vicious in equal measure.”

Dani gave a slight bow, smirking.

“Get over here, you two.” Nico held his arms out wide. Bright was first across, and Nico grabbed him in a bear hug before turning and squeezing Dani in the same way. He laughed with pure joy, a hand on each of their shoulders. “United again.”

“Hello, Nico,” Dani said, her smile warm.

“Nic,” Malcolm said.

“And why do you look like death?”

“I almost died,” Bright replied.

“What? Again? Are you trying to prove something?” Nico said, but his brow furrowed. “Are you alright? Who am I asking.” He shook his head and looked at Dani, “Is he alright?”

“He was poisoned by a land beast and is currently either still drunk or newly hungover.”

“What a delightful combination,” Nico replied.

“I may have discovered new depths of hell,” Bright replied, “Does the Forge have to be so loud?” He motioned toward the center of the vessel as the sounds of mechanical clanks and whirs filled the space around them. The ambiance of the Flotsam creaking was nothing to the clamor that Nico’s Floating Forge produced.

“I’ll ask the contraptions keeping us moving to quiet down,” Nico deadpanned. He reached up a hand to cup Bright’s face and tilt it down, frowning. His thumb pulled at the skin under Bright’s eye. Malcolm cringed in pain. “You let that get infected.”

“Gabrielle gave me some salve.”

“Good, but we’ll need to make some adjustments.” Nico tilted Bright’s face this way and that, examining it with no care for the position of his neck.

“Alright, please remember my head does not detach like one of your devices.”

“I could make a hinge for it,” Nico replied, smirking as he let go. “We’ll get it looked at.”

“Not yet,” Bright replied, massaging his forehead. “If you go clanging around in there right now, I might hurl.”

“Not on my Forge you won’t. Do you know how hard it is to clean vomit out of gears?” Nico shook his head. “So, you’ll be staying a little while?”

“The night, if you’re willing. You can work on his eye tomorrow,” Dani said.

“Are you kidding? It gets lonely out here.”

“How can you be lonely? All the Seafarers in the world stop at your port.”

“Stop, but never stay,” Nico replied, eyes looking wistful. Then he shook his head, “Alright, what do you need?” Bright smiled softly. That was his Nico. Sarcasm aside, the man was always ready to do what other people needed. He was always working, always inventing, always finding new ways to improve the lives of others.

“What I need is to see what brilliant things you’ve invented to help keep my ship running smoothly.” Dani hooked her finger back toward the ship, “And what you’ve invented for protection.”

“Dani, do you have a beau?”

“Protection from poisonous land beasts, not sex, Nic,” Dani replied.

“That doesn’t answer the question though, which is still on the table.”

“No, you know my heart is with the ship,” Dani said. It was a familiar refrain. She was a captain of her own ship, establishing her freedom and founding a home for the both of them. She collected a small crew of people she trusted. Dani built herself a home with her own hands, every other consideration got pushed to the side.

“Fair enough, oh Lover of the Sea,” Nico replied, he turned, “and what do you need, Bright? Sleep?”

“You know what I need Nic?” Bright said, focusing on his friend. He let a wicked smile cross his lips, and Nico returned it in kind.

Bright threw the axe, watching it turn handle over blade until it slammed into the target, square in the center.

“You always were frighteningly good at that,” Nico said, shaking his head. Bright walked over, pulling the axe from the target and returning to Nico’s side. The inventor threw his own, hitting just left of center. Sweat glistened across his brow. The Forge put off an impressive heat from its fires, and Nico ran hot anyway. Bright passed him a canteen of water.

“Thanks,” Nico said, slinging back a long drink of water, some of it dribbling down his chin. “So, are you going to tell me why you showed up somewhere south of drunk and north of hungover in the middle of the day and wanted to throw axes?”

“I always want to throw axes,” Bright said, “Even when I’m not anywhere near an axe some part of me is always thinking: I want to throw axes.”

“And even when you are this incapacitated, some part of you is always deflecting,” Nico replied. He narrowed his eyes, “Tell me.” It was absurd, Nico was one of the few people that made Malcolm feel tall, but there was an intensity in every inch of this man, which he could wield like an expert.

Malcolm walked over, picking up the axe. He walked back slowly, dragging out the moment as he chose his next words. “Would you hate me if I told you I’m in love?”

Nico’s eyes widened, “Are you serious?”

“About which part?”

“About both parts,” Nico replied, “I’m deciding which to respond to first.” He grabbed the axe from Bright and threw it, hitting the bullseye as cleanly as Malcolm had before. “Why would I hate you for being in love?”

“Because we…”

“Our problem wasn’t love,” Nico replied, wiping sweat of his brow, “Your problem has never been love.” Nico waved his hand, “And before you start on it, it’s not the sex either. We could have figured that out. It is not as if we are bound by traditional relationship configurations. We aren’t city dwellers.” Nico squeezed his shoulder, and Bright leaned into the touch, “Our problem was…” he waved a hand at himself and then at Malcolm, “All the other things.”

“We’ve had this conversation before.”

“And we will again,” Nico said, “Dammit, Bright. We are pirates. If being bound by no laws isn’t enough to free you from your limited notions of sexuality, I don’t know what is.”

“Sex is natural.”

“So, is not having sex,” Nico shrugged.

Bright narrowed his eyes, “Are you calling me a starfish.”

“Yes,” Nico replied sarcastically, but then he shook his head, the moment of levity passing. “You hate yourself for so many reasons, and none of them are valid.” He squeezed a little tighter, “If you’ve found someone you can let yourself love, I couldn’t be happier.”

“It’s…very complicated.”

“Look at my shock,” Nico replied deadpan.

“Remember how you were just making fun of backward city dwellers?”

Nico’s expression went blank, “Don’t say it.”

“He’s a Floater,” Bright rubbed a hand over his face, “Worse yet, he’s one of their soldiers.”

“Bright, that’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

Nico let go of Bright’s arm, a huff escaping his lips. He picked up another axe and threw it, hitting just beside the first. “Dammit, Bright.”

“I know.”

Nico pointed at Bright’s eye, the device he had made. “After what they did when you went to the City for sanctuary.”

Bright closed his eyes. It was years ago, when he was a child, but the memory was vivid.

_Eleven-year-old Malcolm Whitly swam as hard as his tiny body could. The current fought him, and he felt his strength failing. He had to make it. His head surfaced for a moment, seeing the shore. It was so close, so close. As his vision bobbed in and out of the water, he saw a building rising from the land. Malcolm would not entertain the idea that this was the wrong place. He would not allow himself to consider giving up. He pushed hard with his legs, using what energy he had left for one final surge forward. His fingers curled around something coarse. Rope. Relief burst through Malcolm’s chest. He felt the ropes close around him. His mind struggled to comprehend what was happening to him. A net. He was caught in a net. Malcolm thrashed, desperate to get free even as he felt it ensnarl him more._

_Suddenly, he was drug up into the air as the net began to be pulled over the side of a platform. Malcolm banged against the side of it, then flopped on the ground like a fish. He gasped for air, struggling for freedom, pushing against the net even as he coughed. Malcolm’s vision slowly swam as he tried to focus on the three shapes looming over him. Three men. They were not dressed like the pirates on the ship he escaped from. They were wearing identical clothes, blue coats with shining brass buttons. New clothes, Malcolm realized, not stained from use._

_One man pulled the net back, “He’s no fish,” he said, as Malcolm scrambled out of the net, coughing. The child scooted as far from the men as he could._

_“He’s one of the pirate’s brood,” the second man said, frowning._

_“A sacrifice to the mermaids?” The third one, the burliest of the three with a nasty scowl, said. “Those pirates doing that with their kids now?”_

_“Wouldn’t be surprised,” said the second, he poked at Malcolm with his boot. “You talk, kid?”_

_“I-I-I…”_

_“Speak up, Sea Urchin,” said the first, “You a pirate?”_

_Malcolm tried to gather himself, grabbing onto the pant leg of the man who kept poking him. “Please, please, sir,” he said, “I escaped.”_

_“Hands off, Urchin,” the man said, then he frowned, kneeling down. “What’s with your eye?” he reached toward the clothe around Malcolm’s face. The boy drew back, but the man’s hands were persistent. He grabbed the clothe and jerked it free. All three made noises of disgust. “He’s one of the broken ones.”_

_“You gonna get one of those…” the first man waved his hand at his face._

_“Modifers,” the third man said. “Abomination.”_

_“Sir,” Malcolm gasped out, “The pirates, they’re looking for me. They can’t be far. You have to get me out of here.”_

_The first two men laughed, but the third just stared at him, his eyes icy as the ocean itself. “Child, your kind has no place in our City. Besides,” the third man walked over, grabbing Malcolm by the collar of his shirt and lifting him with ease, “You wouldn’t be happy there, child. You belong to the sea.” He tossed the child at the second man. Malcolm slammed into him, but the man immediately threw him down on the wooden deck. “Get rid of him. We can’t have the pirates in our business.”_

_“Endicott should wipe out the whole lot of you,” the first man said, glaring at Malcolm, “Mongrels like this.”_

_Malcolm whimpered, “Please…”_

_“Shut up!” The second man kicked him in the gut. Malcolm curled up on his side. Their words, their jeers, blurred together as the two men began kicking him._

_Urchin._

_Mongrel._

_Pirate brood._

_And worse things, implying horrible things about what the pirate’s had used him for. The pain and cruelty swirled around him._

_Then it all stopped with a bang, the loud report of a pistol. The men were gone, Malcolm did not know where. Then another shadow fell over him. Malcolm whimpered, curling up further, but this time a hand touched his shoulder._

_“Hey, hey, it’s okay. The bastards are gone,” a man’s voice said. Malcolm uncurled slowly, opening his eyes. As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, a face became clear to him. He recognized him just as the man’s face turned to shock. “Malcolm.”_ _The child launched himself into Gil’s arms. “I found you, I found you,” he sobbed. Gil’s arms closed around him, holding him, firm but gentle._

Malcolm Bright shook his head and the memories away with it. Nico placed a hand on his shoulder, “Did you go back there?”

Malcolm let out a breath, “I don’t remember the escape, not really. The fear I remember. Stealing the life raft…I don’t know how I got there, how I made it that far. I don’t remember falling out.”

“Just the swim and the attack,” Nico filled in for him. This was an old conversation for them.

Bright drew in a breath, “It was a long time ago.”

“What does time have to do with it?” Nico asked, his voice crackling with anger as he dropped his hand away. “They haven’t changed.”

“JT wasn’t on that dock.”

“Maybe not,” Nico replied. He threw the axe, it went wide of its mark. “But if he’s a soldier of Endicott, he’s been on a thousand docks just like it. He’s said just as cruel things.” Nico whipped around to face him, “Dammit, Bright. How could you love a man that thinks you’re worth is diminished?”

Bright flinched, hand touching his eye, feeling the cold metal under his fingers. “Nic…”  
“No, I’m not done. The only reason you aren’t dead now is because you, at eleven, successfully got yourself to the Pub at the End of the World. That’s incredible, Bright. What you did, escaping like that, is incredible. And those men, Endicott’s soldiers, they didn’t see a brilliant child that saved himself from pirates. They saw just another worthless sea dweller in the making.”

Bright closed his eyes, his head pounding. “I just need to…”

“Hey,” Nico’s anger fled as fast as it came. Bright felt the shorter man’s arms around him, guiding him to a seat. “You really did almost die again, huh?” he asked, voice tight with worry.

“Yeah. He rescued me, he kept me warm,” Bright forced his eyes open to look at Nico. “He carried me home, back to Gil.”

“The best Floater is still a Floater.”  
“I’m not disagreeing,” Bright said, “You’re right, of course, you’re right. I hate this feeling, Nic.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“Cut it out of me?” Bright asked, glancing his way, “You don’t have any clockwork hearts lying around?”

“I could probably fashion one out of copper wire and an old doorknob that would work better than that one,” Nico said, tapping on Bright’s chest, “Way less horrible romantic choices.” Malcolm swatted his hand away.

“Ha,” he replied, then groaned, dropping his throbbing head into his hand. “What am I going to do, Nic?”

“Usually, in this situation I would say meaningless sex with a stranger.”

“Hilarious,” Bright replied.

“But in your case,” Nico said as if he had not spoken, “I have a better idea.”

“Better than throwing axes?”

“Believe it or not,” Nico stood up, offering Bright his hand. His eyes held a light in them that Malcolm knew as uniquely Nic. He took the other man’s hand.

“Lead the way.”

_-_-_

Jin stood on the deck of the airship, his eyes going from the sunset to the notebook in his hand. His hand moved quickly across the page, tracing the shape of letters.

“Not writing another letter, are you?”

He glanced up. Ainsley’s hair caught the red glow of the fading sunlight as she approached him. “I didn’t think you were going to make it.” She did not answer, just came to his side and leaned on the rail. He saw the tightness in her jaw, the little furrow between her eyes. She was like this some nights, bundling worry up inside herself so tightly her whole body wound up with it.

“Is it a letter?” Ainsley asked.

“No,” Jin replied, “It’s…my work.” Ainsley glanced at it slightly, then looked back out to the sea.

“I don’t know why you would want to preserve the past, Jin. It wasn’t a good place.”

“This isn’t a good place either,” Jin said.

“Treasonous words, soldier,” she said, but her tone was dull. She was bantering, true, but he knew she was miles away.

“I’ve said worse ones,” Jin replied. He moved one finger to touch her hand. Out here, in public, even that gesture was a risk. He would take her in his arms if he could. Instead, she pulled her hand away, hugging her own arms. “Ainsley…”

“Jin, why are you wasting your life listening to old people’s stories?” Ainsley asked. 

“You know why,” Jin said, frowning at the snap in her tone, “You used to understand.”

“I never understood.”

He frowned, “You’ve always encouraged my work…

“To humor you,” Ainsley replied, “Honestly, Jin, it’s pathetic.”

Jin put the notebook in his pocket as if he could shield it from her words. “We can’t lose the past, Ainsley. No matter how much Endicott wants us to. We have to hold onto our stories, other people’s stories, or we will end up living in the reality only he constructs.”

“Why did you write me a letter?” Ainsley said, turning around to face him so fast her hair whipped out behind her. “Did you think our story needed to be known too?”

“I…”

“Nicholas found it.”

Jin felt his blood run cold, “He…”

“Found it,” Ainsley said viciously. Jin did grab her arms then, looking her up and down.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No,” She replied, putting a hand on his chest and pushing him away. He stumbled back, staring at her.

“Ainsley.”

“It’s over, Jin. It was fun, but it’s over.” She turned her nose up, somehow seeming to look down at him despite her height.

“Whatever he threatened you with…”

“He didn’t threaten me at all,” Ainsley replied, “He didn’t care.”

Jin blinked, “He didn’t…”

“Because you aren’t a threat to him. You’re nothing to him. I’m nothing to him,” she said. Jin’s mind worked quickly, trying to put the facts together and not finding where they fit. He caught her wrist.

“Run away with me.”

“To where?”

“Anywhere,” he replied.

“There isn’t anywhere that isn’t his,” Ainsley said, “If not yet, then soon. Jin. You don’t get it. We are nothing, nothing at all swimming in the sea of his everything.”

Jin shook his head, “He’s a tyrant. A powerful one, but he is just a man.”

“You are just a man,” she replied, her tone cold, “He is the Aria the whole sky sings.”

“And that’s what you want, Ainsley? Power? His power? You would trade what we have for power?”

“Spoken like someone who’s never had to struggle to survive,” she replied, “You were raised in the City, I wasn’t.”

Jin shook his head, “I don’t care that you’re a Seafarer.”

“Shut your mouth,” she said.

“You’re a Seafarer. A pirate’s daughter.”

“How do you know that?” she grit out.

“I heard him,” Jin replied, “He told me, or he said it when I was there. I’m nothing to him remember? He doesn’t care what I hear. He was talking to your mother about how he rescued the two of you from…” Jin dropped his voice, “From the Surgeon of the Sea.”

Ainsley went very still, “You were in the room when he said this?”

“I told you, he doesn’t care what I hear.”

“Was this before or after we met?” her tone had gone so strange, so weirdly quiet. Jin frowned at her.

“Before…”

“And that day you talked to me?”

“It was that day,” Jin replied. He felt a step behind her, trying desperately to keep up. “I wanted to meet you. I’d…never met a Seafarer before.”

Ainsley closed her eyes, a flash of pain crossing her features. He reached for her again, but she jerked away. The cold was gone, replaced with a deeper, darker fire. “Don’t you get it? Endicott doesn’t let people overhear anything. You said it yourself. He controls the story. He controls the song. If you heard him talking about me, it was because he wanted you to. He wanted us to meet.” Ainsley pointed between them, “Even this was his design.”

“Ainsley, that doesn’t make any sense,” Jin replied, “Why would Endicott orchestrate his own fiancé’s affair?”

She put her hand on his chest again, looking up into his eyes, “Because, he knew I was close to giving up on him. So he gave you to me.” She shook her head, “Jin, he wanted to give me a taste of freedom, so I would know what it felt like when he ripped it away.” She stepped away, laughing in a way that chilled Jin to the bone. “He knew I would never choose you.”

Jin dropped his arms to his side, going still. “You would never choose me?”

Ainsley had not meant to say it, he knew that, but she did not take it back.

“You know,” Jin said, taking a step away from her, “I didn’t know Endicott could pull off something like this, I’m not sure I believe that he did, but it does not surprise me at all that he would try.” He shook his head slowly, “It doesn’t surprise me because I didn’t believe better of him. It’s you that surprise me.”

“Disappoints you, you mean?” Ainsley replied, cutting to the quick of his words. “I never pretended to be a good person. You put that on me.”

“I didn’t put anything on you,” Jin replied, rubbing his brow, “I believed in you.”

“It’s the same thing,” she replied.

“No, it isn’t.

“What do you know?” Ainsley replied, “What do you know about what I have sacrificed?” She motioned toward his pocket, “You get to escape into your words. Some of us have to live in the world, Jin.”

“Words,” Jin said, pulling out the notebook, “This is more than words. These are stories, people’s real-life stories. The stories of living and loving, not just surviving until they died.” He shook his head, “We could have this life, Ainsley. We could have this if we got away…”

“Jin,” Ainsley said, and it was not anger in her words. He detected pity. “I never loved you.”

Ainsley was right about one thing, Jin spent his life chasing words. He wrote truths with every waking hour that was not committed to the service of Endicott, wrote because he needed to read it. Jin listened to the stories of those who remembered life before the Event. He learned quickly how to spot an exaggeration, an embellishment, or an outright re-write. Jin knew truth when he heard it.

“You never loved me,” he repeated, testing the words because they were true.

“You should go, Jin. If you really think you can,” she said, and now she just sounded tired. “I don’t know what Endicott will do to you after we break up. He’s already taken you from me, he might not need you anymore.” She touched his hand, but it gave him no warmth, “I don’t want you to get hurt for me.”

“There is nothing Endicott could do to me that would hurt worse than what you’ve done,” it was cruel, Jin knew, even as he said it, but he felt cruel. He felt like giving her this last cruel truth, but his words did not touch her. Ainsley was already too far away from him, even without moving a step.

Jin turned away from her. He left her standing there, beautiful and cold in the day’s ending light.

_-_-_

Bright laughed, the sound floating around him like a trail as he dipped and spun through the air. Wings, shaped like a bat’s but made of cogs and gears, spread out behind him. He was beautiful to watch, flying through the air, Nico thought. The wings were a wonder and Bright took to them as if he was Sunshine. Nico watched his invention carry Bright down until the man could touch the water and then swing back up.

“So, you thought it was a good idea to let him do this with a hangover while recovering from being poisoned?” Dani asked, walking up beside Nico and crossing her arms. She raised an eyebrow, looking between them.

“Yep,” Nico replied, “What’s the worst that could happen? He plunges into the water, we fish him out.”

“Or he runs headlong into the Forge and kills himself.”  
“Hm, well, let’s root for plunging into the water,” Nico replied, “You want to try?”

“Obviously,” Dani replied, “You better give me my turn!” she called up at him.

Nico noticed something, just a dot at first but growing fast. “Sunshine!” He saw the little dragon spin around Bright, flying in sync with him. She looked curious, Nico thought, if a thing of mostly cogs could be curious.

Dani smiled as the dragon left Bright’s side, coming to land on her arm. “Hey girl…” Dani’s words died. A piece of paper was clutched between the metal claws.

She took it, holding the letter in her hands.

“He wrote back,” Dani said.

Nico took a step closer, “The Floater?” He watched her eyes come up to meet his, watched the uncertainty there. “You didn’t actually think he would.”

“No,” Dani admitted, “And I thought his silence would…”

“Cure Bright of his romantic delusions?” Nico replied, “As if Bright has ever been so easily swayed.” Nico looked up at the man, watched him turn course back for the Forge. Bright was coming in too fast. “Slow down!” Nico’s words fell uselessly in the air between them. Bright’s feet touched down too fast, and he skidded on the metal surface, Nico reached for him, and the momentum took them both down. “Fuck, I told you to slow down!” The inventor started untangling himself from the wings.

“It’s fine, I’m alright,” Bright replied.

“Maybe you are, but what about my wings?” Nico stood up, poking and prodding the metal contraption while Bright actively tried to get it off.

“Did I see Sunshine?” he asked, as Nico finally got him out of the harness. Bright turned to Dani and saw the letter in her hand. “It’s from him?”

“Bright…” Nico started, but his friend was already moving across the distance between them. He took the letter from Dani, his hands shaking so much he could barely get it open. Nico took a step closer, watching Bright’s eyes as they scanned the words.


	8. Location




	9. Chapter 6: Dear Malcolm

_Dear Malcolm,_

_To say I was surprised by your letter is an understatement. A lucky break too. I was leaving the Pub Between Worlds when Arroyo dropped this into my hand. If your bird thing arrived a minute later, I would never have read your words._

_What do you want me to do with these words, Bright?_

_You sound like-_

_You know what you sound like, don’t you? Is it worse if you don’t know? You’re crazy enough to mean every word you wrote. Crazy enough to put them on page where you can’t take them back._

_And you can’t take them back. Now neither of us can pretend they weren’t said._

_What do you want me to do with these words, Bright?_

_Like I said, I am leaving the Pub Between Worlds. In a moment, I will be gone, riding the sky back to the City. You will be sailing your ship. We will be in places words can’t go between. Even stupid, crazy, sincere ones._

_I’m glad you’re not dead._

_JT._

It was worse than Bright imagined. The combination of recovering from the poison, fighting the infection around his eye, and Nico having to remove the device and reattach it sent a migraine raging through him. He curled up in the cabin of the Flotsam, on his side away from the window. Dani had hung a shirt over it to block out what light she could, but even still the harsh red rays were sickening. The sway of the ship made his stomach roll. He felt cold and shaky. Little shocks of pain ran down his nerve endings.

Even still, he forced pen to page.

_JT,_

_I’m not dead. Surprise. Though there’s still time for that to change. Forgive my handwriting. I’m trying not to hurl. I had to get adjustments to my eye. I can practically see you squirming to imagine it. Us unsophisticated pirates, grafting metal to our skin. That’s what your Floater friends would say, isn’t it?_

_If I’m being unkind, it’s because my head is pounding._

_What do I want you to do with my words? Whatever you want, I guess. You can eat them. Did you know that? You City Dwellers are so privileged I bet you don’t know how many things you can eat if you’re hungry enough. You can burn them. They will be less toxic than a mattress._

_You burned a mattress, nearly killing us with toxic fumes to keep me alive not so long ago. Now you’re mad because I gave you words? Imagine how I feel, you gave me back my life._

_Here are some more true words you don’t want to hear._

_I wrote you because I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I thought writing you might make that stop, but then you wrote back. It’s worse, you made it worse. I am writing you from a sick bed, and you are actively making my life worse._

_So, my words can’t reach you in the City? Oh, JT, haven’t you figured it out? We are pirates, after all, well trained in the art of smuggling things into the City. Keep your eyes open, and you might notice this letter isn’t the only Seafarer contraband in your City. My words will reach you if I want them too._

_I can be very inconvenient like that._

_Our ship, my sister’s ship, is called the Flotsam. I don’t know why she called it that originally. She never explained. Dani can be internal in a way I can only imagine—apparently, I’m transparent. Flotsam is all the stuff that floats in the water. Junk, you would call it. Supplies to scavenge for us. So, maybe Dani was making a joke about how our ship was not so much built as cobbled together. How we keep it together with more material we find. Her ship is basically flotsam held together with tenacity and spite._

_But really, I think we’re the flotsam, those of us she’s collected. Dani and I were both fished out of the water—one of us more literally than another. Then she collected a crew of people that would not fit in your City. People the City would call trash. This crew is our family and we sail through the sea stopping at the ports of the rest of our family. We are flotsam, lost and left and found by each other._

_We don’t have much, almost nothing really. We waste nothing. I know the rumors you have about us making sacrifices to the mer-spirits, but for a stereotype it’s not a very good one. No Seafarer would waste a child like that. Not when things are so scarce._

_My point is this—I can’t believe we met for nothing._

_Not in a cosmic sense, I don’t really think there is a design, but I do believe that nothing is wasted, not even moments._

_If I’m not making sense, blame the headache._

_Bright_

JT was handed a bottle by a woman he did not know as he walked his patrol. He frowned, trying to hand it back, but she shook her head. “Trust me, soldier, you’re going to need that drink.”

He found the bottle empty, but containing the letter from Bright.

_Bright,_

_When I said your words couldn’t reach me, I was underestimating how annoying you are. A message in a bottle? Really? A little bit cliché, but what did I expect from you? Your crazy ass couldn’t find a sensible answer if it were on a map._

_I should have said your words shouldn’t reach me. Do you get how dangerous reading your letter was? Do you get how dangerous writing back is? How am I even supposed to get it to you? Toss the bottle over the side and hope you fish it out of the water?_

_I don’t like writing letters._

_JT_

There was a space between the last word and his name. JT left a space, some part of him wanting to give himself room to write more. There were so many unsaid words between the last sentence and his name. In the end, JT wrote none of them. Bright would never see these words anyway.

The next day the woman with the bottle came back, holding out her hand for his reply.

Dani finally allowed Bright back on deck. He was not exactly climbing the rigging, but walking along the ship gave a little of his strength back, even if Dani stayed close to his elbow. He felt the exhaustion reaching down to his bones.

He saw Sunshine, her wings straining as she glided to him, a bottle with a message inside it clutched in her claws. Bright went back to his cabin to write his reply.

_Dear JT,_

_Just writing JT is ridiculous isn’t it? You knew what I sounded like in that first letter. So did I. I want to see you again. We could meet, couldn’t we? At the Pub Between Worlds? I want to argue with you in person._

_You really are bad at writing letters._

_Yours,_

_Malcolm_

JT was not surprised when he got the reply. He closed his eyes, holding it in his hand for just a moment before he burned it.

_Bright,_

_You can’t write me anymore. Not like that, not at all. You’ve never lived in the City. You know the City Dwellers hate the pirates, but you have no idea the way Endicott thinks of you all. He would see these letters as a betrayal, and a personal betrayal to Endicott is an attack on the heart of the City itself._

_Don’t you get it? Reading your words is treason._

_I have a job. I follow orders. I may get sent back to the Pub, or maybe I will never set foot landside again. I will never know. These things aren’t my decision._

_I was a fool to write you so many times. I am a fool to write you now._

_I won’t write again._

_JT_

Malcolm’s next letter returned with Sunshine, the seal unbroken. He wrote another. It came back too. He put his pen to page to write another, but Dani’s hand touched his wrist to stop him.

JT was many things, a Floater and a soldier of the Aria to name a few, but he was also a man of his word. He did not write again.

_-_-_

“So, it needs some modification,” Jessica said, frowning as she walked a circle around her daughter.

“Why, do you think it can look less like me?” Ainsley asked as her mother tugged dramatically on the laces in the back. Ainsley looked in the mirror. Her dress was a color someone called seafoam, but Ainsley could not recall enough about the ocean to know if that was a real thing.

“Don’t be surly,” Jessica replied, a hand on her hip, “It’s one day in a dress your fiancé picked out.”

“One day or the rest of my life?” Ainsley replied, smoothing down the sides of it as she looked in the mirror. The whole party on the eve of their wedding was Endicott’s idea. A masquerade to celebrate their union, he told her. When she entered her quarters to find the dress was the first time she knew the theme. Pirates. Endicott made the party pirate themed. Already the city was a buzz with people laughing about how risqué, how scandalous, as if it was all a joke.

Celebrating his marriage to the daughter of the Surgeon of the Sea with a pirate-themed masquerade. Ainsley felt it like a knife between her ribs. Every choice he made, every word he said, was a brilliant design. Nicholas Endicott was a brilliant man, and Ainsley had a front-row seat to the depths of cruelty he could orchestrate with that mind.

“It’s gross. I’ll agree,” Jessica replied, “Pirates.” She shook her head, “As if something like that could be a joke.” She clicked her tongue, “But it is a gorgeous dress.”

Ainsley looked in the mirror. As a little girl, she remembered curling up on her mother’s lap, listening as Jessica told her stories about life before the Event. She remembered Jessica describing the gowns and the parties. The grand houses, somewhere people could live for generations that did not move along the water or in the air. Ainsley would wrap herself in a quilt and pretend it was a dress. Even her little girl imagination could not have created a dress quite so beautiful. The seafoam clung to her figure perfectly, despite what her mother suggested. It was clear Endicott knew her exact measurements, Ainsley realized with a shudder. The green ran down her legs and flared out at the bottom with detail added to look like scales. The bodice was purple and laced up front and back. It shimmered as she moved. She had shells to weave through her hair. She was meant to be a mermaid, the mythical creatures they said the pirates sacrificed their children too. Beautiful sirens that lead men astray only to destroy them.

Jin might think it an accurate disguise for her, she thought.

Ainsley hugged her arms. She had wounded him to save him, she told herself, but her mind would not let her escape the guilt so easily. Ainsley had only wounded him by finally telling him the truth.

Endicott was obsessed with chasing power. Endicott used people, manipulated people, deceived people. As Ainsley stared at herself in the mirror, she knew that the next day she would stand beside a man who hated her and smile lovingly, while the man who actually loved her watched heartbroken from the crowd. All because she wanted to use Endicott’s power.

She deceived Jin, making him trust her, because she wanted to feel less alone.

“It’s not too late, you know,” Jessica said, her voice quiet and subdued. Ainsley closed her eyes for half a second, and when she opened them, she smiled.

“Too late for what?” she asked, ignoring the way her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Help me out of this, won’t you?”

When Ainsley was back in clothes that felt like her own, she went for a walk up onto the main deck. Her feet carried her back to the spot where she pulled out Jin’s heart, but it was a different soldier that stood there now. “Sergeant Tarmel?” she asked.

He glanced her way slightly, “Ma’am.”

“Don’t,” she said, her hand up to stop him from going to attention, “I’m not my fiancé, I’m not anyone, at the moment.”

“And why would the second most powerful person on the Aria wish to be no one?” JT asked her.

“I’m not nearly second most powerful,” she replied, “I am certain that even you have more power over your choices than I do.”

JT looked at her a moment, then back at the sea. “I doubt that.”

“Oh?” Ainsley asked, “And what is the will of the Commander keeping you from?” She thought he might deny it, but he smirked, just slightly. It was not a happy look.

“A mistake,” JT replied.

“Ah,” Ainsley answered, leaning her back on the railing. “Just because it’s a mistake doesn’t mean it doesn’t make us sad to be kept from making it.”

“And you know about mistakes, do you?”

“Oh, I’ve made hundreds,” she replied. It was fun, in a way, to be light with the intelligent sergeant. He did not seem to believe she was the pure-hearted fool that Jin saw or the power-starved pawn that Endicott understood. He did not seem to even see her as just another victim of fate like her mother did. This sergeant seemed to let her words have their own meaning, without projecting so much on to her.

At least, she hoped she did not imagine it.

“And your mistake,” she said, “Is of a romantic kind?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because you don’t look as if you’ve lost a button,” Ainsley replied, raising an eyebrow. “Come on, spill.”

“And would Ms. Whitly be trying to avoid her problems by listening to mine?” JT challenged.

“What problems could I have?” she replied, “I am marrying the Aria.” JT laughed slightly. She thought, for a second, this was the truest conversation she had ever had. “Please,” she added because she did not want it to end.

“I think I’ve…” JT thought about it, and the words fell unanswered.

“Fallen in love?” Ainsley guessed.

JT scuffed, “Melodramatic,” he replied “I only met um…” he hesitated, glancing her way, “him once.”

She nodded her head to him, “So, what was so special about this once then?” she said, “You don’t seem like the type to get swept up by nothing.” She shrugged a shoulder, “It must have been a pretty big something.”

“I don’t know what was special. I can tell you what was different,” JT replied. He pushed away from the rail, and she watched his energy fully shift. “He’s completely infuriating. I’ve never seen anyone make so many bad choices about their physical health in a row. He just collects trouble. And he could literally be dying, but still find the energy to explain why he thinks I’m living my life wrong. As if he wasn’t an actual walking disaster. Then when I thought I would never see him again, he wrote me these letters.” Ainsley pressed her lips together to try and suppress the laugh, but it must have shown because he stopped dead. “What?”

“You really do have it bad,” she replied, letting the laugh out then.

JT deflated, “I know.”

“What of these letters?” she asked, trying not to think of the most recent letter she had received and the devastation that came from it.

“He wrote me how he felt,” JT said.

“How cruel,” she teased. JT glared at her.

“Who puts their feelings into words like that? Completely honestly? And just sends them without warning to another person?”

“Damn, he sounds horrible,” Ainsley replied with a soft smile.

JT closed his eyes, “A nightmare.”

“So…” Ainsley hated where she drove the conversation, but there was something in her that always wanted the story. How unfair, she thought, that she made fun of Jin’s desire for the same thing. “What decision of my fiancé is keeping you apart?”

“No one decision,” JT replied. She nodded because she understood, even if she did not know the reasons.

“He sounds like he would have been an adventure.”

“A headache,” he replied.

“Oh, some headaches are a lovely thing to have,” Ainsley replied, and then because everything had been true so far, she found herself answering, “I don’t think anyone has ever given me a headache.” She glanced his way, “Are you going to report me for treason?”

JT shook his head, “No,” he replied, “Not if you don’t report my disloyalty.” Then he added, “And not even then.”

“I won’t,” she replied. “You know, your love isn’t the only one who is frighteningly honest.”

“If he hadn’t written that letter, we could have…”

“Gone on being in denial?” Ainsley replied, “Gone on as things were, even if they weren’t good?”

JT raised an eyebrow, “Are we still talking about me?”

“We’re going to pretend we are,” Ainsley replied, narrowing her eyes. JT stared at her for a moment more, but he did not ask. The moment slipped from them, and he straightened his uniform cloak.

“I have to make my rounds. Do you want me to see you back?”

“No,” she replied, “I am in no danger, here in the sky.” She let her arm dangle over the edge.

“Is that true?” he asked, his voice soft. It was an invitation, she knew. This soldier was a good man, but he had no more power than Jin.

“Only the danger of shrinking until even I can’t see myself anymore,” she replied, “Only the danger of dying of boredom, trapped with no ability to make a single decision that is not designed by someone else.”

“Ainsley…” he said, and she had not realized he knew her first name. She lifted her hand.

“This at least, is a choice I made and continue to make. Don’t try to protect me from a life I made myself.” She started to walk away and hesitated, “Do you know Jin Lee?” When he nodded, she went on, “Maybe check on him. He…just check on him?” She waited for him to nod again, then left him there. The expression slipped from her face as she stepped back into her role, vacant. Pliable. A pretty face.

_-_-_

Every night at the Collective was like a party. It was enough that it might make a person believe that their actual celebrations could not be much more festive. That person would be wrong. Dani walked along the paths of the Collective. The solar lights and handmade decorations were breathtaking. Dani was convinced that Nico could create anything, but the Collective could make anything beautiful.

There was a part of her that cringed at their dresses, sewn for the occasion. It felt close to City like excess, but she knew that as not true. The logical part of her brain knew that everything from the celebration would be repurposed a thousand times over. She knew this, but there was a part much deeper that remembered when every meal was a gamble. That part of her from before she met Gil and Malcolm still cringed.

“It’s a party, Dani,” Nico said, nudging her ribs “Don’t look so serious.”

“Happy Moon Festival, Nico,” she said. She and Malcolm had spent almost a week moored to the Forge as Malcolm recovered his strength. Dani did not like staying in one place that long, especially not after spotting the Surgeon of the Sea so close to Gil’s Pub, but she realized the constant movement was not helping him heal.

And she hoped Nico’s presence would help him recover from the other wound.

Dani did not know how to feel about this JT, this man who bore her brother’s name. Some part of her was glad to see the letters dry up, glad to see it end before they got in deeper. The other part of her watched Malcolm over the week.

“You’re not the only one who isn’t wearing a party smile,” Nico replied, nodding to Malcolm. He was a few steps ahead of them as they headed toward the center of the Collective, but his eyes kept going to the starlight sky.

“Malcolm!” Edrisa said, catching herself quickly to add a nearly as excited, “Dani! Nico!” She ran over, enveloping Bright in a hug, before pulling back and brushing her hair out of her eyes. “I heard you almost died!”

“How did you hear that?” Bright frowned. She touched his arm.

“From…you won’t believe who’s here!”

Dani looked away from them to the man walking down the path. From the time she was a small child until now, no one person’s appearance made her feel instantly as safe. “Gil,” she called. She saw the way Malcolm’s shoulders loosened a little too. Gil reached out and cupped the back of his neck.

“Hey, kid,” he said, then to her, “Hi Dani.” He reached over and squeezed her arm as she approached.

“Gil Arroyo,” Nico said, spreading his arms out wide, “Did the Pub fall down when you left it’s doorway?”

“Taking life as seriously as ever I see, Nico Stavros,” Gil said. He released his kids and stepped over, bringing Nico in for a hug. Nico was not a child when he first met Gil, but the Pub Owner still found ways to parent him. They were each in a way Gil’s strays—Dani thought—her, Edrisa, Nico, and Bright. They each occupied their own spaces, but the axis they revolved around was Gil and the Pub Between Worlds.

“Did the Surgeon touch ground?” Malcolm asked, dropping his voice low. Gil shook his head.

“No. Even he won’t cross Endicott,” Gil said, “Not when the City and the Seafarers have both agreed to protect the Pub. Especially not with Endicott’s City floating so frequently right overhead.”

“They are still floating right over land?” Bright asked, his eyes gaining a faraway look as he glanced up at the sky.

“Yes. I don’t know if it has to do with the soldiers he keeps sending down or if he’s staying stationary for their…own celebration.”

“The celebration,” Bright said, his tone completely off. Dani reached over and touched his wrist. She thought of their news. Ainsley Whitly, alive and marrying Endicott. In all the times they had talked about what happened during their last visit to the land, Ainsley was one topic he refused to let her approach after that first drunken conversation.

“This is our party,” Nico cut in, “And we can throw one a thousand times better than those Floaters. Come on.” He looked hard at Bright, offering his hand, “Come on. Let the world shake with our merriment.”

Bright looked up. Dani saw his eyes were still hooded with pain, but he gave a smile that was not entirely forced and took Nico’s hand. He offered his other to Edrisa, who grabbed it like she would die without it. He let himself be pulled into the center where the musicians sat cross-legged on the floor, playing instruments made from scavenged parts.

Dani stood on the sideline, watching as Nico and Edrisa pulled Bright into the dance. Edrisa laughed as she fell into his arms, and Nico spun them both around. Their laughter seemed to lift Bright, if not entirely from the gloom, at least more than she had seen him in days.

“How bad is it?” Gil asked her.

“He’s…heartbroken.”

Gil nodded, “I’ll talk to him, but later. Dani, Nico and Edrisa have him now. He’ll be okay.” Gil nudged her shoulder, “You shouldn’t always be on the sidelines, watching out for everyone.” 

She smiled, “Neither should you, old man.”

“Who are you calling old?” he replied. Dani laughed, going toward her family. Edrisa grabbed her arm and pulled her in, letting their group become a messy dance circle.

Then there was dancing and food and drinking. A lot of drinking.

_-_-_

Bright fell, exhausted to the grass. The alcohol helped, the laughter helped more. For a moment, he forgot, but the moment his body was halfway still, it came back.

The Surgeon of the Sea.

The City.

JT.

Ainsley.

He groaned and rubbed at his eyes.

“Not giving up already, are you?” Edrisa asked, coming to sit beside him. He could have sworn this woman was keeping pace with him in drinks, but she did not seem nearly as drunk as he felt.

“We’ve been dancing for hours.”

“It felt like moments, with you,” she said, then sat forward, leaning her chin on her elbow. “You keep staring at the sky. Are you thinking about the City?” When he didn’t immediately reply, she kept going, “I think about them sometimes. Not a lot, but sometimes. Just floating above us and hating us. Believing we aren’t as good as them, and I think ‘how sad’.” She poked Bright’s chest. “because we’re awesome.”

Bright smiled softly at her, “You’re awesome.”

She laughed, blushing, “As if you aren’t too.” She rocked forward, “But why are you watching for the City?”

“I’m…thinking about people up there.”

“You know City Dwellers?”

“One,” Bright replied, “And one I used to know.”

“I’ve only ever met them at the Pub, and none of them ever let me talk to them.” She gave a broad yawn and laid back on the grass. Bright looked at her for a moment and then laid down beside her. She found his hand in the grass, and he let her take it. “They say the City is so bright, people can’t see the stars when they are floating in it. Isn’t that sad?” She took Bright’s hand and used it to point, tracing around constellations. “Imagine missing all of this.”

“That is sad,” he agreed, “I think my sister is up there.”

“Dani’s over there,” Edrisa said, confused.

“No, my bio sister,” Malcolm replied, “She’s marrying Endicott.”

Edrisa rolled over so she could look down into his face. “I did not know you had a sister.”

“I didn’t know she was still alive,” Malcolm said, “I thought she might be, but I had no idea. The last I heard, she and my Mother went to join the City in the Clouds when I was a child. I never knew if they made it or not.”

“They didn’t take you with them?” she asked, and he saw she looked almost ready to cry.

“They didn’t know where I was,” he told her. The alcohol still shone in her eyes, but she looked as if she was trying to put on her most serious expression even still.

“You’ve never told me about your childhood.”

“It wasn’t a good one,” Bright replied. “My father, my biological father, was a cruel man. My mother and sister got away. I wasn’t so lucky.”

Edrisa’s face was full of such genuine empathy, it hurt to look at. He turned his gaze back to the stars. “Now she’s marrying Endicott. I hoped…” He paused for a moment, “As much as I hated the City, I always hoped they found a better life up there. My sister is marrying the only man as bad as my biological father.” He shook his head, “She was just a child when I last saw her. She could be anyone now.” Bright glanced over at Edrisa, “And I almost fell for the same trick.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think I almost fell in love.”

He watched the pain flash across her too expressive face, but she buried it, and almost at once, a look of sympathy replaced it. “With a City Dweller?”

“Yeah.”

“People are easily fallen for,” she said, and he knew what Edrisa meant even if he did not know how to respond to it. She dropped back onto the grass. “How does that mean you fell for the same trick?”

“Because somehow my sister ended up with the worst of the City Dwellers,” Bright replied, “And I fell for one of them too. Maybe we’re both fools.”

“You said you don’t know her anymore,” Edrisa said, “So, you can’t judge her choices. People make choices for all sorts of reasons. And is this person you fell for as bad as Endicott?”

Bright hesitated, “I didn’t think he was.”

“If you didn’t think he was, he probably wasn’t,” Edrisa said, with so much confidence. Bright wondered if he had ever felt that confident about anything in his life. “You’ve always been incredible at reading people.” She squeezed his hand, and he realized then, even when his words hurt her, Edrisa would not let go. “What did your instinct tell you about him?”

“That he was good,” Bright said, “Somehow, despite everything. That he cared about me even if he thought he shouldn’t.” Bright glanced over. He saw the tension in her jaw. “Edrisa…”

“No,” she sat up, and he followed suit. “Don’t apologize. Don’t you dare. You didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did I.” She shrugged her shoulder. “It just wasn’t in the cards.”

“Edrisa, how can you be so…?” Bright asked. He knew how long she held on to those feelings. He had not recognized it at first, but Dani spelled it out for him.

“Because,” she replied, “I love you. It isn’t love if it has conditions, Bright. I love you even if it isn’t returned, and because I love you, I want you to be happy.” Edrisa looked into his eyes. “Do you love him?”

“I barely know him.”

“Irrelevant. Do you love him?”

Bright hesitated. He thought of her words. The way Edrisa spoke of loving him. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe against all better judgment, it was true, “I do.”

“Then you should go to him!”

“He’s in the City, Edrisa.”

“Go to him!” Edrisa made a motion with her hand, like an airship taking off.

“I can’t just…”

“Go to the City and see him. Don’t let this fade away until you know.” Edrisa grabbed the front of his shirt, “If you have shot, take it.” She met his eyes, “I don’t regret trying to make it work with you.” She shrugged, “Because I had to know, you know.”

“But I’m not in a City full of armed guards and ruled by a cruel tyrant.”

“Those are just semantics,” Edrisa’s eyes light up, “There’s going to be a party! Celebrating Endicott’s wedding!” She pointed at him, “Do you know what that means?”

“No?”

“People, people everywhere, and apparently, it’s a masquerade! Everyone will be in costumes. If you were to choose the best possible day to try and infiltrate the City…”

Bright frowned. He knew he was very drunk, but this idea seemed to make sense. “Everyone would already be in disguises, but…we can’t make costumes by tomorrow.”

“You wouldn’t have to.” Bright looked up to see Dani come over. She took a seat beside them. “The party is Pirate themed.”

“Pirate themed?” Nico replied, joining her. “So, they mock us, but when it comes time to make a costume, suddenly our lives are themes?”

“Dani…” Bright said.

“You and Edrisa are not breaking into the City without me,” Dani said.

“We aren’t breaking into the City at all,” Bright said, “I’m not risking you on a meaningless chase.”

“And yet when we walked up…” Nico said.

“You heard me dreaming, not planning.” Bright stood up, swaying from the alcohol. “It was a way to…to let myself believe for a minute. No one is going to the City. There’d be no point.” He saw Dani’s brow furrow before he turned away, but he stumbled back to the Flotsam anyway, back toward his own bed. His mind whirled with thoughts trying to fight their way through his drunken haze.

Sleep came easy with the aid of the alcohol, but he woke up before the dawn, knowing what he needed to do. Bright pushed himself up, glad the hangover was nothing compared to the last one. He got dressed quickly and quietly, strapping his swords to his hips. He pulled his equipment pack across his shoulder.

He turned around to find Dani in the doorway.

“I knew you sounded too sensible last night,” she said.

“Dani…”

“You were going to try and sneak into the City alone,” she accused. It was not a question.

“Dani…”

“Bright. We don’t do this.” She stepped into his room, pointing at him, “We don’t cut each other out of plans. We don’t. We agreed all those years ago.”

Bright remembered it. Two children with the red sun at their back, making a blood pact full of promises to each other.

“Dani,” he said, “I can’t let you risk yourself.”

“You aren’t letting me do anything. We are doing this together. That’s how we do everything. If seeing JT again is this important to you, it’s important to me too,” she shook her head, her jaw tight with anger. “You don’t leave me out.”

Bright opened his mouth to protest but shut it. He knew when he lost. Slowly, he nodded instead. They stepped together toward the door. Bright came up short. Just outside stood Edrisa and Nico. “You two…”

“Save it,” Nico said, raising a hand to end that line of thought, “We’re all going or none of us are.”

“Exactly,” Edrisa said, raising her chin with the most defiance she could muster. Bright looked over and met his sister’s eyes.

“So…we’re doing this.”

She nodded, “We’re breaking into Endicott’s City.”


	10. Chapter 7: Dear Gil

_Dear Gil,_

_I am writing this in case we don’t make it back. If we don’t, I wanted you to know that your stupid ass son has gotten us all killed or possibly imprisoned. I don’t recommend trying to save us. It is probably just as futile as this whole plan is. Did I mention this is Mal’s fault? It is. I want that explicitly noted._

_It seems that this love affair with a Floater has gotten serious. Did you know about this? I don’t mean that to sound like an accusation. I know there is nothing any of us could do to change Mal’s mind once it’s been set to something. Also, by “it’s gotten serious,” let’s be clear. I think it’s gotten serious exclusively inside Mal’s head. As far as I can tell, this man has told him he is completely uninterested in further contact, but despite that, we are currently on our way to break into the City in the Clouds to see him._

_We are currently headed to your Pub—I told Mal you would be furious he dragged the Pub into this—while you are asleep. We are going to steal a Floater’s Schooner while they sleep. Then we are going to sneak into Endicott’s engagement party because it’s pirate themed so our clothes should work. Then we will try to locate one soldier among an entire army. You know, because the whole army will be there._

_It’s a flawless plan, really, except for all the ways it won’t work._

_You might be saying, if I think this is such a bad idea, why am I going? Well, could you imagine the trouble they would get into if I didn’t? Especially since Edrisa is going? She always gets Mal hyped on his own ideas._

_It’s going to be a disaster._

_I’ve told them many times this isn’t going to work, but they aren’t listening._

_So, take care of my creations if I don’t make it back? Don’t let the Forge be raided by pirates. You can even have the wings. Also, you should probably take in Sunshine. She’ll be heartbroken if Mal dies and will need comfort. Maybe you can find it in each other. Also, you can find comfort in the fact that our deaths were all entirely preventable and had no reason to happen._

_Best,_

_Nico_

It was the night of the biggest celebration since the Event, and JT Tarmel was forced to wear the dress uniforms Endicott insisted they all have. It felt awkward. He spent so long in versions of the one uniform that this new style felt wrong. JT shook his head and left the barracks for the main hall. He saw Sergeant Jin Lee standing there, motionless and staring. The conversation with Ainsley floated back to his mind, and JT slowed his steps. Since that night, he had never found a chance to speak to Jin alone.

They knew each other, of course they did. Endicott did not have so many soldiers that it was possible to entirely miss each other, but their acquaintance was the passing kind, and JT had no idea how to start this conversation.

Bright would just ask, the awkwardness be damned, he thought.

JT shook that off, “You okay, man?” he finally asked. Jin looked up slowly, frowning more through him than at him.

“What?”

“You look like the altitude got to you,” JT said, trying to remind the other soldier of their high altitude training as younger recruits. Jin focused on his face for a moment, and then slowly nodded in recognition.

“Right, probably all the chaos getting to me,” he said with a shrug. It was not true, but JT knew Jin was only offering a thin excuse so the conversation would end. A week ago, JT would probably have let it.

“Yeah,” JT said, “But you’ve seemed off for a few days.” JT had not seen enough of him to notice this, but if Ainsley was right, the comment would hit home enough for Jin to accept it. The other soldier’s stance drooped unprofessionally, and JT thought he saw the flash of barely contained emotion. JT expected the pain. He was surprised by the anger.

“Believe me, Tarmel. You don’t want to know.”

“I think I do,” JT replied, he let out a breath and took a gamble. “Ainsley was worried about you.”

Jin’s eyes snapped to him, and the anger hardened there. “I’m sure she was,” he said, his tone cold. JT knew this man to only ever be professional. He knew him just well enough to have seen flashes of real kindness. He was pretty sure Jin spent all of his extra time with the older people on the airships, writing down their stories. If anything, JT had at times wondered why someone with as much heart as Jin was one of Endicott’s men.

JT would never have guessed at how darkly his eyes could flash when he was furious.

“Ainsley no more cares about my wellbeing than she does that of a gnat.” He started to walk away and paused, turning to look at JT. “Endicott doesn’t either. You’re a good man, Tarmel. You should know that. Do with it what you will, but you should know. When all is said and done, Endicott’s plans benefit Endicott.”

“Those words are treason,” JT said, not able to put heat into them. Jin took a step back toward him.

“So arrest me.”

JT stood motionless as Jin’s eyes met his and searched for something. JT said nothing, but he also did not move. Jin shook his head, breaking the eye contact and walking away. JT let him go.

_-_-_

Dani was a good pilot, Bright told himself. She took to it naturally, Bright reminded himself, even if the take off was a little shaky. He nearly tumbled into Edrisa. They were so crowded in this schooner, which was technically not designed to fit four people comfortably, but Nico insisted his understanding was they could safely fly it, they would just be cramped.

They were cramped. Bright let out a breath, closing his eyes. He was not joking when he JT he really hated tight spaces.

“You good, Bright?” Dani asked, glancing up from her controls.

“Fine, fine,” Bright said, his voice just a little too high.

“Just, breathe through your nose. We’re almost there,” Dani said.

“I got him,” Edrisa said, and Malcolm felt her touch his arms. “Focus on my voice, Bright.” He opened his eyes and looked into hers. “You’re here now. You are here, and on the other side of this journey is the man of your dreams.” She moved her hands down to take his, and he saw the slight stir of tears in her eyes, “And if he’s at all smart, he’s going to see you again, and immediately melt.” The way she would if it was her he loved, were words left unsaid, but Bright heard them anyway.

“Edrisa…”

“Oh, hush,” she replied, “And let me live vicariously through your love.”

“You’re wonderful,” he said instead. She glanced down.

“Oh, come on.”

“You are,” he replied.

“You two are suffocating me with your mutual appreciation,” Nico replied, “Dani, are we _there_ yet?”

“Yes, this is the…hard part.”

Bright turned to look at her, “This part being?”

“The landing?” Dani replied. Bright was not used to hearing her sound anything but confident. He was not thrilled that she sounded that way about the most dangerous part of their journey. “Hold on, you three.”

Bright closed his eyes. He did not want to see what came next.

_-_-_

Ainsley put her hand on the doorknob and let it linger. On the other side, every major player in the City was gathering on the deck of the Aria to celebrate her imprisonment, expecting her to be happy. They would be jealous of her, not knowing the hell her life had become.

She hated them. She pitied them.

Ainsley pulled the door open, and her heart went still in her chest. Jin stood on the other side, his normally expressive face blank for the first time. “Jin…”

“Ms. Whitly,” he said, tone intentionally meaningless. It was a knife, twisted in her gut. She deserved it, she knew. He offered her his arm, the gesture holding the formality of a soldier—of a stranger. She hoped he did not notice the way her hand shook as she took it.

“Jin, can we…”

“There is no need to make small talk. I am but a soldier in the service of your future husband who sent me to collect you,” he said. Jin was not a cold man, it was her actions that caused this in him, and she felt it to her core. She let silence slip between them. Ainsley thought, a better woman would have tried to undo some of the damage, but she had chosen the damage. Maybe, the damage would be better for him in the long run.

So, she walked with him in silence until the sound of music drowned out any conversation they could have had.

The music was loud, filling the sky with songs. She noticed in a moment, the orchestra was playing an Aria. Her senses were immediately assaulted as they stepped onto the deck. Beyond the music, there was the chatter of voices making meaningless conversation. There was the clicking of glasses full of alcohol. Each person clothed as grand, brightly colored versions of the pirates that sailed the sea below them.

When she stepped out, the crowd turned and cheered as one. Jin dropped her arms and stepped away, going to stand by the door. She glanced his way for just a second, and saw Sergeant Tarmel at his side. Ainsley caught his eye for a moment and JT nodded.

She faced forward and stepped into the crowd. As soon as she was on the floor of the deck, the door across from her opened and the crowd turned like the shifting of a tide to face it. Commander Nicholas Endicott, the Aria, the song the whole sky sings, stepped out onto the deck, and her breath caught, suffocated by sudden emotion. The pirate captain’s cloak he wore was grand, the shade of fresh spilled blood, trimmed with gold, and unmistakable. Every person in the crowd would know that costume anywhere.

Endicott was dressed as the Surgeon of the Sea.

Ainsley felt disconnected from her body. She stumbled slightly, and JT caught her arm. “Ainsley,” he said quietly, she shook him off and fled the deck. She ran into someone and pushed them off before they could say anything to her. The fact that all eyes were on Endicott meant few people were looking, she hoped. She just needed to get out. She glanced around her and her eyes stopped on a man. Unlike everyone else, his costume was not grand, but simple. His dark eye—the other was hidden under a cloth—stared back at her.

Ainsley was not a superstitious woman by nature. She was too practical to believe that drowned spirits turn into mermaids or the ghosts of the wronged return to the decks of ships at night, and yet, she knew at once this was a ghost. She ran from the deck, her skirt tearing in her flight.

_-_-_

Bright could breathe again when they finally docked and stepped out onto the airship. They landed on one of the lesser vessels and made their way across the rope bridges to the Aria. It was easy enough to find their way, they only had to follow the music.

The closer they got, the more they started seeing people headed the same way.

“These costumes,” Edrisa said, turning this way and that.

“Don’t look anything like ours,” Nico replied.

“They are so…extravagant,” Edrisa replied.

“Garish,” Nico replied, “And overwrought. That man has a skull cane. A. Skull. Cane.”

“And the colors, so many and all put together. It’s…” Edrisa waved to him.

“An assault on our eyeballs?” Nico replied. “Is this what they think we dress like?”

“Stay focused,” Dani said, but Bright could hear the tightness in her voice. She was worried.

“Hand me your band?” Bright asked Nico. The man frowned, but he unwrapped the cloth from his upper arm and handed it to Bright. Bright took it and wrapped it over the device on his eye. “No one has augmentations.”

“Oh, even when making a mockery of us, they wouldn’t condescend to do that,” Nico replied, his tone hard, full of anger.

“We have to split up,” Bright said.

“No,” Dani replied, her eyes whipping to him.

“Look at us. We look drab in comparison to these costumes,” Malcolm said, “If we stick together, it’ll only stand out more.” He frowned, “We have to.” Before Dani could object again, he dodged into one of the passages.

“Bright!” Dani barked behind him.

Malcolm ducked into a crowd of people to try and put distance between himself and his sister. The path led out onto the main deck. Bright’s steps faltered. It was so much excess. The costumes he saw on the way were nothing compared to some of the ones around him now. He thought of Edrisa’s festival, of how each item would be repurposed. He knew that was not the way of the City, and he felt tears rise up in his eyes. He could not breathe.

“What are you supposed to be, some kind of servant?” said a man, frowning, looking Bright up and down. “You actually look dirty…”

“Who are you talking to, Simon?” asked a woman who came and took his arm. Bright left before they could say more to him. He looked across the room and made eye contact with a woman. She was blonde and dressed like a mermaid. It was a grand dress, but it made a knife twist in his gut. The memory of the Floaters on the dock looking down at him and asking if he was sacrificed to mermaids flashed across his mind. She broke eye contact first, running off the deck and into the bowels of the ship.

Bright swung his gaze over the crowd. There were so many people. Everything was too much. Suddenly, thoughts began pounding in his head.

This was a bad idea. He shouldn’t be here. Nico was right. Malcolm realized that if this was who JT was, it did not matter that he was kind once. Bright wanted nothing to do with him. Then he looked up and saw the man the crowd was focused on.

Bright froze. Not just still, but cold through. He could not breathe, he could not escape.

The red costume, the gold filagree. It could be no one but the Surgeon of the Sea, standing on a raised platform. Bright could not fathom why Endicott’s people would cheer for the Surgeon. He could not imagine how the man came to be here. It did not matter. Bright was off the deck before he realized he had started to move, running the opposite direction of the way the woman had run before him.

_-_-_

Dani was going to kill her brother. She would hug him first when she found him, but after that, he was walking the plank. She sensed Edrisa and Nico split off in different directions and immediately cursed. Bright got what he wanted. Now they were splitting up to find his ass.

Dani stepped into one of the rooms just off the main hall—how were these ships so large? Dani stopped in her tracks, eyes widening. There was a table of food. So much of it. Dani wondered if she had ever seen so much food at one time in her life. Immediately, her mind began to calculate. No matter how many people were here, so much of this would be wasted. So much of it was perishable. It would go bad quickly, and no one was even here eating it.

Dani took two steps away, disgusted by the display in front of her. It was power, she knew. Endicott was showing off what he had created from the ashes of the Event. In his former life, he was no one, but now he had more than anyone left alive in the world, and he wanted everyone to know it.

She hated Endicott, hated him more than she ever had before.

Dani turned away, more determined than ever to find Bright and get off this nightmare.

She walked into a room that was almost entirely made up of windows. It was stunning, and in any other context, Dani knew she would find it beautiful. Now, all she could see was a portal to look down on those below. She heard a slight faltering breath, the first signal she was not alone in this room. Dani’s hand went to the pistol at her hip as she turned around.

A woman, likely a few years younger than her, sat on the raised step of the floor. Her blonde hair was falling free of what looked like a once elaborate style, but now was only a curtain between her and the world. Her shimmering purple and green dress seemed designed to hint at the mythology of merpeople. A dark story to use as the basis of a costume. Maybe the fact that the Surgeon of the Sea famously used sirens as his excuse for slaughter was just a joke to these people? Dani watched her a moment and then took a step forward.

The woman’s eyes came up, and Dani saw they were tearless but full of pain.

“I just need a moment, sir,” she said glancing down. Her eyes came back up fast, and Dani got the sense of being examined. “Oh, I thought…most of the women came in dresses.” The woman’s eyes focused for a moment on Dani’s britches, before lifting back to her face.

“Well, not really practical for a pirate,” Dani replied, slowly approaching her. “These give so much more range for swordplay or climbing riggings.”

A slight smile touched the woman’s lips, “I don’t think most people here were aiming for accuracy.”

“Clearly,” Dani replied, slowly she moved to take a seat beside the woman. “You seem to be hiding.”

“Oh, there’s no hiding from my fiancé.”

Dani’s eyes widened just slightly. “Your fiancé…”

The woman looked up, “You don’t know who I am?”

“I think I just figured it out,” Dani said. So, this was Ainsley Whitly. Dani looked at her, saw her fair hair and small but hard body. She tried to find any of Malcolm in this woman, but she could not see it. It was not just a difference in the color of their hair, it was something that went deeper. Ainsley Whitly had none of the open emotions Dani was used to reading from Bright’s face. Her jaw was tense in a way that told Dani she was more familiar with a frown than a smile.

“You must have missed the grand entrance then,” Ainsley said with a sigh, “Did you see dear Nicholas’ costume?”

“I was a bit late,” Dani offered, surprised to find her tone even despite how her thoughts raced. Ainsley dropped her eyes to the floor. Dani may not have been able to read her the way she did Bright, but one would have to be hopeless if they could not see the hints of pain in her posture. “Does it have something to do with why you are not at your own party?”

Ainsley smirked, but the look was entirely humorless. “I mean, it’s not so much the reason I’m not out there as one more sign I never should have been. He came as the Surgeon of the Sea.”

“That monster,” Dani said. It came out before she could stop it, and Ainsley’s eyes jumped back to hers in surprise.

“Yeah,” she replied, her tone skeptical. “Who would do that?”

“You mean show up to their engagement party dressed as the man that slaughtered dozens of people?” Dani asked.

“Yes,” Ainsley said, her tone still careful. Dani frowned, knowing she was pushing her luck but wanting to push it, maybe just a little bit further.

“Aren’t you also wearing a costume meant to remind people of his victims?”

Ainsley flinched, “Endicott picked it.”

When Gil found out that Ainsley was alive—had been living all these years above their heads—and was marrying the worst human left in the world, Dani had been prepared to hate her. Hate her for never coming to find Malcolm and for choosing to not only become a part of the system, but benefit off it so completely. Dani could not find any hate in herself for this woman in front of her, this woman that seemed just shy of the point of shattering.

“I…you don’t seem to like your fiancé very much,” Dani said.

“Do you always say exactly what you think?”

“I don’t like games,” Dani replied.

“And how do you survive in the City with an attitude like that?”

“You would be surprised what someone can survive,” Dani said.

Ainsley hmphed quietly. “I guess I should go back out there.”

“You don’t have to,” Dani replied because she wanted to see more of Bright’s sister. She wanted to understand what brought this woman to choose a man she clearly found repellent. Ainsley looked over, meeting Dani’s eyes.

“I have a part to play.”

“It sounds like your fiancé is doing plenty of acting for both of you,” Dani shrugged, “You should stay.”

“People are very fond of telling me where I should stay or go,” Ainsley replied.

“He does seem the type,” Dani replied.

“He is, but not just him.” The woman smoothed out her skirt, as if by fixing the wrinkles she could do anything about the way it was torn. “I had a man who wanted to take me away from here. Don’t bother trying to get anything out of the scandal, my fiancé already knows.”

Dani shrugged, “I have no desire to trade in scandal.”

“You really are a strange City Dweller then,” Ainsley said.

“So, is this other man why you are sitting here?”

“No, and yes. In a way. He offered to sweep me off my feet. He was charming and handsome and honestly, like you.”

“Like me?”

“Pure-hearted.”

“I’m not pure-hearted,” Dani replied, “I just don’t have time for bullshit.” Ainsley smirked.

“Okay, fair. Well, he is pure-hearted. He loved me, I really think he loved me, but the problem was he didn’t see me. I didn’t let him see me until it was too late not to hurt him. I keep sitting here thinking, what would I have done differently, and the worst thing is, I don’t know there’s anything I would do differently. That’s horrible, isn’t it?”

“Doesn’t sound great,” Dani replied. Ainsley looked startled. “What, did you expect me to comfort you?”

“No,” she said, but her tone said that she had, in fact, thought exactly that.

“So, you hurt a guy that loved you to be with one who you hate?” Dani asked.

“I…yes,” Ainsley replied, then her brow furrowed, “It’s not that simple.”

“Nothing is,” Dani replied.

“You don’t understand. Without Endicott, I am nothing,” Ainsley replied. “You have no idea…”

“You have no idea,” Dani replied, “You are dressed in all this opulence with a table full of food just out in the hall while people die of starvation on the sea below you. You think your life is complicated? You think I have no idea? You’re the one with no idea.” She stood up. “I am sorry your life isn’t what you expected. I am. Maybe it doesn’t sound like it, but I am, but I can’t sit here listening to you talk about how you would be nothing without him. Nothing? By that you mean, like everyone who lives below the City? Yes, that would be quite the sacrifice.”

Ainsley stood up slowly, “Who are you?”

At that moment, the sound of a horn blowing repeatedly broke through the noise of the party above.

_-_-_

Edrisa and Nico tried to keep up with Dani for a moment, but she put a hand on Nico’s arm. “Nic, Bright’s right. If we stick together, we really are going to be obvious.”

“Now is not the time for your belief in Mal’s infallibility,” Nico replied. “What good would separating even do?”

“Well, we have to find JT.”

“We don’t even know what he looks like.”

“Yes, but someone will.”

“Edrisa, this is not the Collective. People up here aren’t just going to go out of their way to help you.”

“I know you think I’m naïve,” Edrisa replied, “But I can do it. You go that way, I’ll go this way,” she said, and she left him there before he could object.

It was beautiful, really, even though it was overwhelming. The costumes were unlike anything she had ever seen, and the music was so different than what the Collective created. She did not understand how all of this was possible. “Focus, Edrisa,” she whispered to herself. She took a deep breath and plunged into the crowd.

“Do you know a soldier named JT?” she asked again and again. Nico was right about one thing, no one seemed particularly interested in helping her, but she was not going to give up. Bright needed her. She cleared her throat as she approached a blonde woman with a strong build. The woman was still wearing a dress that would have been ridiculous down on the sea, but it was far from the flashiest costume around. It was simple really, a soft burgundy dress. It was like the woman was trying to be a part of the party without drawing much attention to herself. When she turned around, Edrisa realized this was an impossible task. The woman was stunning.

“Yes?”

“Do…” Edrisa swallowed, starting over, “I’m looking for a solider.”

“Ah, well, there are plenty on the prowl tonight. I doubt you’ll have trouble finding one,” the woman said, “You don’t exactly look dressed for a hunt, but with your natural beauty, I’m sure you’ll catch someone’s eye. Although really, you could aim a bit higher than one of Endicott’s chosen men.”

“No, I don’t mean like that, Miss…”

“Sophie Sanders,” the woman said, catching Edrisa’s hand out of the air and squeezing it. “Pleasure, Miss?”

“Edrisa Tanaka.”

“It is a pleasure, Edrisa,” the woman said. Before Edrisa could push for an answer to her question, two more people joined them. “Ah, this is my sister, Eve, and our friend, Simon Coppenrath.”

Simon’s eyes narrowed slightly, “Would you care to dance, Miss Edrisa?”

“I…well.”

“Excellent,” Simon took her hand and pulled her into a dance. Edrisa found herself trying to understand the steps. It was nothing like the way they danced in the Collective, this seemed to have a plan. “So, earlier, I met someone else dressed exactly like you.”  
Edrisa’s eyes widened, which of her friends had he met? “That’s…interesting.”

“It is,” Simon dipped her, lowering her toward the floor with his strong arms and then pulling her back up, “So,” he said, dropping his voice as he pulled her closer. “Where did you come from?”

“What do you mean?”

“You clearly aren’t from here.”

“What? I don’t understand…”

“Please, Ms. Edrisa,” he said, “Not everyone in the City is happy with how things are run, but we all know to play the game. You don’t even seem to know the rules.” He raised an eyebrow, “And you don’t have the control over your expression necessary for subterfuge.”

“Are you going to turn me in?” she asked because he was right, the gig was up. She had tried, but he was right, her skills lay elsewhere.

“Like I said earlier,” replied Simon, spinning her, “Not everyone here likes the way things are run.” She was trying to decipher his meaning when a horn sounded. The musicians stopping in response.

“What’s that?”

“Well, it’s either a wildly timed coincidence or someone has realized you and your friends are here,” Simon replied.

“It’s a warning?”

Simon nodded, taking her hand and guiding her back to the two sisters.

“Is that for her?” Sophie asked.

“You realized I wasn’t from here, either?” Edrisa asked.

Sophie smiled slightly, “Let’s say, we are good at spotting those who don’t quite fit.” Sophie took Edrisa’s hand from Simon’s. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Sophie, whatever this is, it isn’t our fight.”

“Hush, Simon. This party was boring,” Sophie replied, “Eve?”

“I’ll keep an eye out. Go,” Eve replied.

Sophie looked at Edrisa, “Come with me? No one knows this ship like I do.”

Edrisa did not know this woman, but she trusted her. Maybe it was foolishness or wishful thinking, but Edrisa believed she was a good judge of character. She had known she could trust Bright the minute she met him, and he never once let her down. So, Edrisa nodded, and let this woman lead her into the ship.

_-_-_

Nico was not only alone on this ship against his will, but he had no idea what he should do. Edrisa was looking for JT, but honestly, Nico hoped they did not find the man. What good could come of Bright meeting this asshole soldier? Nico supposed he could hunt for Bright and Dani, but even that seemed pointless. So, he began wandering. He stepped into the hall and found the room full of food. Nico raised an eyebrow. He walked down the table. “Alright, not all bad.”

“Oh no, not bad at all. He really spared no expense.”

The woman’s voice brought him up short. He turned to see her, standing in the doorway in a black dress that hugged her figure. She narrowed her eyes at his clothes.

“How authentic your costume is,” she said, and Nico heard exactly what this meant.

“And how much younger than your age you’re dressing.”

The woman’s jaw dropped, “Excuse me?”

“Oh, I thought we were telling each other the truth, was that not what this is?”

She gave an affronted laugh, then took a step closer. “Excuse me, do you know who you are talking to?”

“No, no, I do not, should I?” he replied.

“I am the mother of Commander Endicott’s fiancé.”

“Then it sounds to me like you are related to somebody who is somebody, but I’m missing the part about who you are,” Nico replied. “Nico, by the way.”

“Jessica Whitly,” she replied, “As for who I am, I am a woman you don’t want to mess with.”

“That’s more like it,” Nico replied, “You should lead with that rather than hiding behind Endicott’s name. You seem like a formidable enough woman on your own, Jessica.” He raised his eyebrow just a little. Was it hypocritical to flirt with this City Dweller? No, Nico told himself, because he had no intention of taking it further. She caught the change in tone and raised her own eyebrow.

“You are entirely shameless,” she said, but her tone had slightly less of an edge to it. Nico started to return the parry, keep their game alive, but there was something about her that was bothering him. It was something about her eyes, but that was not the only thing. He realized her name sparked something in his mind.

Whitly.

Oh. Nico took an involuntary step back. Mal. Mal told him one night, laying in his arms as they cuddled under the stars, that he believed his mother and sister had escaped to the City. That was the night he told Nico about getting attacked by the City Dwellers on Gil’s dock and realizing he would never reach them, if they even made it.

Their last name was Whitly. Mal’s last name was Whitly before he changed it to Bright.

Nico knew why her eyes were so familiar. He had stared into her son’s eyes often enough. He took another step back. “Yes, shameless,” he said, but the spark was sucked out of the moment. “You’re the mother of the fiancé you said?” He had to ask. Did Malcolm know? He tried to imagine how betrayed Mal would feel knowing his family was not only alive, but they had climbed to the very top of the social hierarchy.

They left him to die on the ship of the Surgeon of the Sea while they thrived.

Suddenly, this woman was not just formidable. She was cruel.

“Yes,” she replied, clearly not following the way the conversation was shifting. At that moment, the horn blared. Nico looked up, trying to understand what this signaled. When he looked back, he saw Jessica eyeing him.

“That sounds to warn of intruders,” she said, out loud but to herself. She was looking at his clothes again. Nico grabbed a hand full of a fluffy food he did not recognize and threw it at her, dodging around her in the same half a second. He sprinted for the door.


	11. Chapter 8: Dear JT

From Dani’s collection of letters to her missing brother, unsent:

_Dear JT,_

_Today I am an adult, I think, at least if old metrics apply. It doesn’t exactly mean the same things to be an adult in this new world. There is no formal change. After all, what is childhood if not a chance to be shielded from some of the worst parts of being an adult? We stopped being shielded when the Event happened. We were no longer children._

_But by some old measure that had meaning once, I am an adult today. Gil cooked this amazing meal, he was probably planning for an absurdly long time. Mal barely left my side, as if he was afraid of missing a single chance to tell me happy birthday. Our new friend Nico came too. It was lovely, in its way._

_I tried to be happy, but I couldn’t do more than fake it. Don’t get me wrong, JT. I love the life I have, the family I’ve found. I am happy, a lot of the time. Don’t think I am sitting around sulking all these years. I have lived. I have lived hard because I know how easily things could change._

_It’s just days like this, I miss you._

_Gil asked me what I wanted to do, if I could do anything. I knew the answer immediately. It was what I wanted in the secret places of my heart, but never said out loud. Today, I decided to say it. I want my own ship. I want to be a captain, a seafarer, not a pirate, obviously. I just want to build myself a home, collect my family around me, and sail. I want a home that moves with the wind, that navigates by the stars. Somehow I think, if my home can move, it will not feel so impermanent._

_I am going to start working for a ship. Nico immediately began drawing up plans and deciding what supplies we would need, what type of crew I would have to find._

_Mal asked, “Are you going to leave me then, Dani?”_

The festivities silenced for a moment when the horn rang out its warning. Every citizen knew the sound, but it had been so long since anyone tried to enter the City. The room fell into a startled stillness.

JT took a step away from the door. An intruder alert on this of all nights. Intruders? Who would try to enter the City from the people that lived below?

JT closed his eyes, “He wouldn’t,” he said. He opened his eyes as another soldier approached.

“There are intruders,” the man said.

“What do we know?” JT replied.

“There are multiple, they came in a stolen schooner from the Pub Between Worlds. The soldier they stole it from just returned with another stationed there to report it. They found the ship docked one port over. Endicott wants this handled, fast, with no more commotion than there is already.”

Even as the soldier passed this message on, Endicott stood on the higher deck, raising his hands to bring silence to the troubled crowd. “This is nothing to concern yourselves with. Our soldiers have it all in hand. Please,” he said, turning to the orchestra, “Resume.” The musicians exchanged looks, but they began to play again, their music filling up the space once more.

JT nodded. An intruder from the Pub Between Worlds. He knew in his gut two things at once. This could be no one but Malcolm Bright, and JT had to find him before any of the other soldiers did.

If their ship had been found, Bright and whoever he dragged on this misadventure with him were cut off from their escape. “Dammit, Bright,” he said under his breath, trying to scan the crowd for any sign.

“Sergeant Tarmel.” The voice was Jessica Whitly’s. He paused and turned as she walked over. “I don’t know this helps at all, but I think I saw the intruder.” JT turned to face her.

“How do you know?”

“Well, he was wearing an outfit that was…dirty,” she replied, “And, he ran when the siren went off.”

“Short, dark hair, talks too much?”

“Yes,” Jessica said, eyes widening in surprise.

“Where did you see him go?”

“Um,” Jessica glanced back, “Well, he was in the banquet hall, and then he ran out the door.” It was not much to go on, but at least JT had a sense of which side of the Aria Bright may be on. He nodded to her.

“Thank you.”

“Are we in danger?”

“No, I don’t think you are,” JT replied, ducking into the hallway. He started looking into the rooms, eyes tracing around for anyone wearing clothes that seemed out of place. He paused. This was stupid. Bright hated closed in spaces. He would not be down here in the smaller rooms. If he was able, he would have headed to one of the decks outside. JT did not think Bright would still be out with all the party guests after that warning alarm. Where could he go?

Maybe the observation deck?

Endicott’s room where he looked over his fleet was nearly all window. It was the closest to open-air one could get without being on the main deck. If Bright had not made for one of the other attached ships already, JT would bet he had gone there, and it was on this side of the ship. He took off at a sprint.

JT came into Endicott’s observation room at a run, slowing only as he saw the two women standing there facing each other. Ainsley turned to look at him, and so did the other woman. At once JT knew her clothes, though he had only seen her at a distance the day he saved Bright from the mountain lions. This was Bright’s captain and sister. So, Bright was the one that broke into the City.

“JT?” she asked, taking a step closer. Her voice made something in his chest ache. Her voice was deeper, but unmistakable.

“Dani?”

Shock ran through her expression as tears filled her eyes. “JT…when he said your name…I…I never dreamed it could be you…”

Dani stepped closer to her, it was almost too much to bear. When Bright talked about his sister, JT would not let himself believe it could be possible. The hope had ignited for half a second before JT put it out beneath his boot. Hope was for those willing to be hurt, willing to be disappointed again and again.

But here she was.

The sound of footsteps marching by outside got his attention. The other soldiers were searching this hallway. JT cursed, “We don’t have time. They know you’re here.”

“You’re the intruder?” Ainsley asked. JT had forgotten the other woman was there. He glanced at her. After their conversations, he believed she was not entirely in Endicott’s pocket, but that she could easily betray them for her own gain. It would be a gamble, but he was making it.

“She is, and we’re going to keep her from getting caught.”

He watched the thought run through Ainsley’s mind. Whatever calculations she was making, her jaw tightened, and she nodded.

JT went to the door and looked out, cursing. “They’re out there.”

Dani’s voice was still a little off, but she was with it enough to ask, “Is there no other way out?” She pointed to the door in the back of the room.

“That’s the Commander’s quarters.”

“That’s it,” Ainsley said, “Come on.” She ran for his quarters and swung the door open. “Come on!”

“There’s no way out back there,” JT replied, heading into the room after her, Dani at his side.

“You forget, I’m his fiancé,” Ainsley said. She walked over, pushing aside a large sea chest to reveal a hidden compartment. “It should have enough room for…” She considered, “Both of you. I’m assuming you don’t want to be found alone with me in Endicott’s room.” She said it with an air of meaning, like it was an inside joke with herself, but he nodded. She pulled back the compartment door. She was right, it would fit them both, but barely.

Dani got in immediately, and JT followed. Ainsley waited for them to clear it before closing the door over them. In the darkness, he nearly elbowed Dani, but she shifted around to give him space without comment.

“I can’t believe you’re alive,” she said, then quietly, “Why didn’t you say anything when Mal mentioned me?”

JT was silent for a moment. “I didn’t believe I could be so lucky,” he replied, “I thought if I let myself hope, even for a minute, the hope would…” He wanted to gesture, but in the cramped quarters, he could hardly move his arms at all. “The hope would be devastating.”

Dani was quiet now too. He wished he could read her face. He wished he still knew her expressions well enough to read them even if he saw them, but she was not Danielle, his little sister who played hide and seek in the orphanage anymore. She was Dani, a pirate captain, strong enough to survive a herd of poisonous mountain lions on her own and make it back unscathed. He did not know this woman, but she was his sister all the same.

“How did you survive?” she asked, quietly. A stomp on the floor above them.

“Shut up, they’re coming in,” Ainsley hissed down at them. They heard the door open, heard boots pounding into the room, and heard her giving a fake, drunk laugh. She was talking, fast and high. They could not make out what she said, but soon enough the boots retreated. It was silent for a moment before the door swung open. Ainsley reached a hand down, helping Dani out of the hole. JT pulled himself up after. “I doubt they’ll come back, but I have no idea when Endicott will come. You need to get out of here.”

“Where is Bright?” JT asked, turning to Dani.

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“He ran off,” Dani replied, waving her hand. Of course he did, JT thought. The same man that would think sneaking into the City was a reasonable decision would definitely believe it was a good idea to split up without setting a rendezvous point. “We have to find Edrisa and Nico too.”

“Who?” JT shook his head, “Never mind. So, there are four of you here?” Dani nodded. “Of course this couldn’t be easy.” He had known Malcolm for so short a time, but if it involved him, easy was too much to ask. “And you have no idea where any of them are?”

“Correct.”

“Wonderful,” Ainsley replied, then paused, “Wait, is this guy your mistake?” JT turned to look at her, and she gave a disbelieving laugh, “You were not kidding about him being a headache.”

“Here’s the plan,” JT said, ignoring her, “You and Ainsley…” He looked to Ainsley to see if she was still included in this narrative. She just nodded, “Dani, you and Ainsley go searching the port side. I will search the starboard.”

“I thought splitting up was a bad idea,” Dani replied.

“Splitting up with no meeting point is a bad idea. The three of us running around together is going to draw attention, but Ainsley knows the City as well as I do. You two stay together. Once the moon is in the third position, we meet at the starboard port. You know the one?” When Ainsley nodded, JT looked at Dani, “And Ainsley, maybe give her something to wear that doesn’t make her immediately recognizable as the intruder.”

JT ran out of the room before either of them could protest.

_-_-_

Ainsley watched him go and then looked back at Dani. “He’s right. You need better clothes before we search for JT’s guy.” She took Dani’s hand and tugged her foreword. Ainsley peaked out into the hall, and seeing no one, began to lead the way. She let herself into quarters not far off. “My mother’s room,” she said, “It’s closer than mine, and you’re closer to the same height.” She shut the door and headed for the closet, leaving Dani standing in the middle of the room. “How do you know, JT?”

“He’s my brother,” Dani said, her voice quiet, “We got separated during the Event.”

Ainsley paused, looking up from her search, “I lost my brother too. Not then, later, but…” She looked back into the closest to hide her expression from the woman. “I can’t imagine learning he was still alive. For a moment tonight, I thought I saw him. Judging my life choices.”

“Is that the kind of thing he would have done?” Dani asked, and her voice was much closer than Ainsley expected. The woman turned to see her, leaning against the wall beside the closet.

“Who wouldn’t? Even you did.”

Dani shrugged slightly, but she did not apologize.

Ainsley grabbed a dress and held it out between them, “Here. It’s not fancy enough to make anyone jealous, but it won’t have you standing out. Think you can wear an impractical skirt for one evening?”

Dani looked at it skeptically but nodded. She took it and started undoing the buttons on her coat. Ainsley felt color rise to her cheek and turned her back. Pirates were incredibly forward.

“Alright,” Dani said.

Ainsley turned around. Dani was beautiful, there was no denying that, and the green of Jessica’s dress looked gorgeous on her, but Ainsley found herself thinking that Dani was hotter in her captain’s clothes. She blinked, wondering why that was where her mind went at all?

“So, who is this guy we are looking for?” she forced herself to ask, heading for the door rather than looking at Dani anymore.

“My brother, my other brother,” she explained, “Malcolm.”

Ainsley stopped dead. It was too much. The emotion of seeing Endicott dressed as her father matched with the trick of her eyes—or conscious—that caused her to hallucinate her brother. Now this? “Malcolm?” she asked, hoping she had heard wrong. Another trick of her mind to make her feel worse.

But Dani was looking at her with the eyes of someone who knew a secret, concerned but waiting for her to catch up. “My brother is Malcolm Whitly.”

_-_-_

Nico turned the corner a bit too tight, his eyes widening. There were soldiers on their way to him. He back peddled just as one of them caught sight of him. “Over there!” Nico turned on his heels and ran back the way he came. “Cut him off!” He heard a voice say. They would know the ship's maze better than he could. His mind raced as he tried to figure out a plan. They were floating, in midair, no water over the side to jump into—at least not for far too long a distance. He cursed Bright in every language he knew as he ran. Nico made the only choice he could. He picked a way at random and turned another corner.

Something collided with his ankle, and he hit the ground hard.

“I got him,” a voice said above him, and Nico found himself pulled up by the back of his cloak until he was staring into the face of a soldier. The man was around his age, Asian, and tall. He was chiseled, Nico thought, likely from hard days of sprinting to kiss Endicott’s ass. “Are you going to make this difficult?”

“Absolutely,” Nico replied, punching out with his mechanical arm. He hit the man right in the gut and the soldier doubled over.

“Jin!” Another soldier called, as Nico got loose and took off.

“I got him,” he heard the soldier, Jin probably, say half winded from the hit. The man was already on his tail again. Nico cursed. After years of life on the Forge, his upper body strength was to die for, but he had so little need for endurance running when he lived on a tiny human-made island. The soldier, Jin, gave a grunt and slammed into him. They both hit the ground this time. Nico struggled, getting himself turned over, but Jin quickly had him pinned. “Who are you?”

“Excuse my manners,” Nico grit out and spit directly in his face. Jin pulled back, but kept Nico pinned.

“Just yield,” Jin replied, “If they get here with you struggling like this, someone might decide you are better off unconscious.”

“Resorting to threats now?”

“Warning,” Jin replied, shifting his hold so Nico had even less room to move. “Why did you try to break into the City?” His expression felt so off. He seemed almost disappointed. Jin pulled him up, “Come on.”

He started marching Nico down the hallway without ever giving him enough purchase to get free. Nico fell back on his other source of defense. “You know, you seem real hesitant about this whole capturing me thing. You could just let me go.”

Jin huffed, “Does that usually work?”

“I am so rarely taken captive by a handsome soldier.”

He felt a slight falter in Jin’s steps and noted it.

“Clearly, you have no idea how to handle yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” Nico replied, “But they don’t hand out rules for properly navigating these scenarios down on the water. In fact, we don’t think much about you City folks at all.” It was not entirely true. Nico thought about them quite often as he shook his fist at the sky. Metaphorically, mostly.

“If you aren’t going to tell me who you are, you should probably stop talking.”

“As if you have a legal system based on presumed innocence up here?” Nico replied, “What good will being quiet do me?”

“It will keep you from annoying me to death,” Jin replied, “Seriously, I am trying to help you. Half the men out there would sooner drag you back than make sure you stay safe.”

“None of you Endicott’s men have ever done anything to help anyone,” Nico replied, all attempts to get the man on his side dropped at the fury he felt in his gut. “You destroy and reject and steal all in the name of the City. You grab up resources like they could belong to you. You call your leader the song the whole sky sings, as if the air could ever belong to anyone. The whole sky? Please, there is a whole planet out there, and Endicott has only touched part of it. You City Dwellers just want power.”

Jin stopped their progress. “Not all of us,” he said, his voice quiet.

“Oh, because you just follow orders? So, it’s not your fault?”

Nico felt his arms released and he dropped them to his side. He slowly turned around. Jin stood there staring down at the ground.

“I don’t know what…” Jin looked up at him, but the words died on his lips. “Do you hear that?” All at once, the sound of screaming came from the deck above them, and the ship rocked violently.

_-_-_

JT ran down the hall after leaving Ainsley and Dani’s side. He headed out to the deck where the party carried on quite easily without the woman of honor, he noted. His eyes scanned around, but he knew Bright would have gotten out of the swell of people by now. JT’s gaze snatched on the nearest bridge connecting the Aria to a smaller ship. The greenhouse ship.

JT walked across that bridge. It was empty of people, most either at the Aria or back in their quarters by this hour. He spotted an open greenhouse door—completely against protocol—and went to it, peering inside. In the near dark sat Malcolm Bright, head in his hands.

“There you are,” JT said. Bright did not look up. JT frowned and approached. He got all the way to Bright’s side without him reacting. “Bright?”

Those blue eyes—for he knew the blue of them even without being able to see it in the dark—looked up at him. “JT?” he sounded lost and frayed at the edges. The soldier frowned, sitting down beside him, and wondering if Bright was more damaged by the poisons aftereffects than he thought.

“Are you alright?” he asked. Then, “You came to see me?” He had expected to be mad, to tell Bright how stupid that was, but he could not imagine voicing those thoughts to Bright as he saw him now.

“That doesn’t matter now,” Malcolm replied, “The Surgeon of the Sea is here.”

JT frowned, confused for a moment, “No, no, he isn’t. That’s Endicott. In a costume.”

Bright looked up, immediately looking for a lie in JT’s face. “Why would anyone do that?” he asked.

“Honestly? I’m sure there’s something at play. Something we can’t see,” JT said. Bright was coming around, more focused definitely, but his eyes were still guarded.

“That sounds like a criticism of your leader.”

JT shrugged at that. It did sound like that, and he was not entirely sure whether he meant for it to or not. “I was looking for you.”

“You knew I was here?”

JT wanted to answer that, but the story was too big, too much to start with. Instead, he said, “You came here on a schooner.” It was not what he meant to say when he opened his mouth. Bright seemed lost, but he nodded. “You hate closed-in spaces.”

“I wanted to see you.”

JT stared at him. It was so easy for Bright to say that, as if it was nothing at all to him to lay his heart bare. “You came here in a tiny ship…for me?”

The moment was shattered by the sound of screams from the ship beside him. JT was on his feet at once, and nearly got knocked off them as the Aria shook and made the greenhouse vessel rock with it. The Aria was huge and reliable. A sudden jerk like this was not in her nature. JT caught himself on the wall, looking up as if the answer lay in the ceiling. “Dammit, Bright, what have you done?”

“Me?” Bright asked, he stood slowly. When JT glanced over, the man seemed more alert, but deeply confused. “I didn’t do this.”

“So, it’s a coincidence that you sneak onto the safest ship in all the world and then something starts going wrong?”

“I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but I didn’t do it.”

JT looked at the man beside him, “Stay here and put this on.” JT undid his jacket and tossed it to Bright. “You look like a walking signal of intrusion.”

Bright caught the coat and started pulling it on, it hung off him awkwardly but at least covered his seafarer clothes effectively. “I’m coming with you.”

JT wanted to argue, but a Bright in sight as probably safer than a Bright left to his own devices. “Stay close.” He waited for the seafarer to nod before drawing his pistol and making his way back across the bridge, toward the sound of screaming.

_-_-_

Dani watched Ainsley sit motionless on her mother’s bed, staring at the floor. She knew they were living on borrowed time. She knew that they still had to find Malcolm, Edrisa, and Nico, but the woman seemed frozen. Whatever she thought happened to Malcolm when they left him behind for the City, clearly she had not expected him to show back up. Dani shook her head and walked over, kneeling down in front of Ainsley.

“I can tell this is a lot,” she said, “But we don’t have time for an existential crisis right now. We have a real crisis. Your brother is out there with our friends, and all of them are in danger. I need to know if you can pull it together or if I need to leave you here?” She watched Ainsley’s eye rise to meet hers, saw Ainsley steel herself. The younger woman nodded.

“Okay,” she said, standing. Dani knew that look. That was the look of a woman who had been through horrible things and kept fighting. Dani saw it in her reflection when she caught a glimpse of it.

“Let’s go,” Dani said, and she offered Ainsley her hand. The other woman took it just as the world started to shake.

_-_-_

They were no longer prisoner and captive, they were two men in a crisis. Jin ran toward the screams with Nico at his heel, just slightly behind those long strides. Nico wondered if he should run the other way, use this distraction to escape, but if there was chaos on the ship, it seemed all too likely Mal was involved in it.

They came out onto the deck, emerging into a wall of bodies. The party guests were scattering in all directions. Nico’s eyes cast around for the reason. His heart stopped in his chest.

Dressed all in black, what must have been at least twenty men crawled like shadows over the edge of the ship. They stepped onto the deck with a kind of internal rhythm that seemed otherworldly. Each drew a sword, the blades catching the party lights and twisting it.

“Pirates,” Nico breathed, “Real pirates.” These were the Surgeon of the Sea’s Spirits. Living men, Nico thought, that moved like ghosts. Though many told tales that made them seem as if they had powers not of this world. Watching them now, Nico understood why. Silently, they moved through the crowd, causing screaming chaos in their wake. The pirates sliced, and in the second Nico was frozen there, he saw a handful of party guests fall to the ground. Blood arced, hitting the white flags marking Endicott’s wedding and leaving them splattered in crimson.

Nico felt a hand grip his chest, “Get out of here,” Jin said, pushing him toward the way they came. Then he watched this man that moments ago was his enemy step between him and the Surgeon’s crew. Jin drew his pistol, and Nico saw his hand was completely steady. Nico pulled a gear at his wrist and his own weapon unfolded, a crossbow gauntlet whirred and clicked into place. He stepped up beside Jin and looked up, the other man met his eyes and nodded. These were not his people, but somewhere in this mess of humanity was his family. Nico did not need a moment to think about if he would stand and fight if it meant protecting them.

_-_-_

Bright stayed at JT’s side, his sword drawn as they ran forward. He knew these men at once. JT may have assured him the man he saw was not his father, but this was no costume. “The Spirits,” he let out as a breath. He knew these men.

He was forced to live among them before.

Malcolm felt the cold panic settle in his gut and turn into a stone, hard and sharp. Then in its wake he felt numbness spread. He firmed his stance as people ran around him trying to escape. More bodies hit the deck as their swords sliced.

Just then, Bright’s eyes lifted to the side of the ship. Another pirate stepped up. Red cloak flashing, using the party lights as his own spotlight, he was an actor stepping out on a stage. The Surgeon of the Sea, his father Martin Whitly. He looked around the chaos his men wrought, arms spread wide as if to conduct their movements. He was too far away for Bright to see his expression, but he knew the glow of delight that would be there.

Endicott’s wedding party, coated in blood. It would be everything Martin could want.

“Fuck,” JT said beside him. He turned to Bright, “Go. This isn’t your fight.”

“What?” Bright asked, looking at him.

“Get back to the ship you stole and get out of here. Bright, these aren’t your people to defend. They’re mine.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Bright replied, and there was no time to argue. Every moment they fought with each other, the pirates were cornering guests for the slaughter. So, Bright gripped his sword and ran forward, JT calling his name.

_-_-_

It was horrifying. Ainsley watched the blood bath. She saw guests getting on their knees in surrender. These were left alive. The pirates were chasing the ones that ran instead. It was like a game. Ainsley took several steps back. She was on the edge of the crowd. There was room to escape. Then Dani threw her a knife. She scrambled to catch it and saw the determination in Dani’s eyes. “Be careful.” Ainsley realized that Dani knew she was planning to run. She also realized that Dani was not planning to.

Ainsley did not move. She watched Dani break eye contact, shake her head, turn and run into the fray.

_-_-_

His fellow soldiers were dying. Men JT had fought beside were trying to make a human wall between the pirates and the civilian guests, losing their lives in a bath of blood. They were no match for the Surgeon’s Spirits. JT realized in a dark flash that for all their training, for all the rigor Endicott put them through, for all the scouting, the worst thing any of these soldiers ever fought was one of the mutated beasts. There had not been a true battle in his lifetime, not since the Event. They were soldiers, but none of them were killers, and the Surgeon’s men were here to slaughter.

“Tarmel!” It was Jin’s voice, he turned toward it and saw the other soldier running to his side with an unfamiliar man beside him. “We have to get the civilians out of here.” Jin met his eyes, “Our soldiers will be dying in vain if we don’t get them out.”

JT nodded, he was right. “Get them to the escape ships.”

“Come on,” Jin said to the other man, but he shook his head.

“I have to find my friends.”

JT knew at once this was one of Bright’s crew, “Bright’s in there,” JT motioned to the fray. He saw this man’s eyes widen, his grip on his weapon tighten. JT saw the look and knew this man was no fighter, and JT was not about to let a friend of Bright’s die. He grabbed the man’s arm and shook his head. “Help Jin get the escape ships ready. Have the ship ready to go, I’ll make sure Bright gets on it.” He sprinted toward the line of approaching pirates, dodging around civilians running the other way. He did not wait to see if this man agreed.

_-_-_

“That’s JT?” Nico said, Jin nodded.

“He’s right, if we don’t get a way for people to get off the ships, saving your friend won’t matter.” Jin started off, and Nico turned to run after him.

They climbed up on the side of the ship and Nico watched Jin’s eyes widen. “What is it?” he asked, pulling himself up beside the soldier.

“They…they sabotaged the escape ships,” Jin said. Nico looked over the edge. The ships were all still attached, but on each the release mechanisms were destroyed. “They were here doing this…probably since the party started.”

“All the noise was a good cover,” Nico replied, he clicked a button on his wrist and the crossbow folded in. He was not a fighter, not now and not at the end of the day. Nico pulled out a wrench, and it felt right in his hand the way a weapon never could.

“What are you doing?” Jin asked.

“Saving all your asses,” Nico replied. He lowered himself down and, with a breath, put his foot on the escape ship. He prayed to the moon or whoever was listening that he was right about the ships still being attached.

Nico closed his eyes and let go of the riggings.

_-_-_

Bright found a wall of soldiers between himself and the pirates, but he saw their lines thinning. It would not be long before they failed, and the pirates won. Bright’s eyes scanned the running civilians for any sign of his friends, but all he saw were City dwellers in torn garish clothes streaming around him, jostling into him.

Then it happened, one of the black-clad pirates broke through. Bright felt his hand begin to shake at the hilt of his sword. He braced it with both hands. This one was a bald man he knew at once. Burkhead. Bright’s heart leapt into his throat. He could hear the man’s ugly laugh echoing in his memory.

Then there was someone at his side. Bright glanced and saw JT, in his soldiers stance with pistol drawn. He nodded to Bright. “Your friend, the short guy ran back that way.”

“Nico?” he said, raising his voice over the screaming crowd.

“I promised him I’d get you to the escape ships safely.”

“I’m not leaving without Dani and Edrisa.”

“Dammit, I’ll find them. You go.”

Bright shook his head, but there was no more time to argue. Burkhart was on them. “Well, well, you almost have the look of little Mal,” the man said, his eyes flashing cruelly. JT hesitated, Malcolm braced.

A shot rang, and Burkhart hit his knees to the deck, then fell on his face dead.

Dani stood there, the wind whipping through her red cloak and braids, her pistol smoking from its saving shot. She lowered it, calling, “Bright,” as she sprinted to his side, grabbing his arm. “You good?”

Bright nodded, then motioned behind them, “Nico’s already back there. We just need Edrisa.”

“Bright,” JT’s tone made his eyes immediately snap up. Another soldier fell. The Spirits would be on them in a heartbeat.

“I haven’t seen her out here, Bright,” Dani said, “And she’s not a fighter. She would have gotten to safety.” Bright felt the tug, looking back at the fight. What if she was already among the people on their knees, captured? Bright knew what it was like to be captured by these men. He felt the memory tugging at the corners of his mind and pushed it off before he could slip away into it.

He met her eyes and nodded. As one they turned and ran back toward Nico.

_-_-_

“Ainsley, come on.” Her mother’s voice broke Ainsley from her horrified stare. She felt Jessica’s hand on her arm forming a vice grip. That will bruise, she thought as if she was observing from a distance, and then Jessica was pulling her away from the fight and back the way she came. “Endicott has retreated to his observation room,” she said, “Where you should be.” Ainsley let herself be guided, let herself because resisting would be a step too far for her mind. A group of soldiers guarded the door to Endicott’s observation deck. The soldiers parted to let them through and closed rank behind them. Ainsley had the sensation of being swallowed once again into Endicott’s control. Swallowed whole like a snake swallowing an egg.

Jessica let her go once they were inside, once the door slammed shut behind them. Ainsley rubbed her arm knowing it should hurt. She felt no hurt. She looked up and saw him there. The Aria, the song the whole sky sings, Nicholas Endicott stood by the window. His hands spread out, leaning on the glass. He was motionless, Ainsley thought. Then she thought, he does not look in control.

The numbness started to loosen its hold on her for the first time since she learned Malcolm was still alive and laughter bubbled out of her. It was high and hysterical to her own ears. She could barely make out Jessica staring at her in horror, but eyes were blinded with laughter tears or real tears. She did not even know how to tell.

Endicott whirled around, glaring at her, “Do you find the slaughter of dozens so humorous?” he said, his tone cold, “You are your father’s daughter.”

It made the hysteria recede, but all she found in its place was anger. Anger so deep and so vast she could not find the edges of it. She stepped up to him, looking up into his eyes, and for once, despite their height difference, she did not feel small. “What I find humorous is you,” she said, “You who seemed so strong. You who was always in control. You who controlled the whole sky, but you never had anyone challenge you, and look at you. Your precious Endicott’s men are dying. Your ship is overrun, and you don’t have a plan. You felt so safe, so sure that nothing could touch you that you do not even have a plan.” She laughed again, this time it was ice. “To think I was afraid of you.” Endicott’s hand moved so fast she barely saw it. He struck her across the face so hard she hit the floor. She hit it at the same moment the door burst open, slamming against the wall.

The Surgeon of the Sea walked in, his crimson coat trailing around his legs and a trail of crimson blood left behind him with every step of his boots. “Now, Nicholas,” he said in the tone one would use greeting a friend over dinner, “I know you do not treat your fiancé that way.”

“We had a deal,” Endicott said. However unsettled he was a moment before, the cold Endicott she knew was back. He strode to meet Martin Whitly. “I know you are not breaking our bargain, Whitly. You have enjoyed such prosperity on the sea, and do I need to remind you, you owe it all to me.”

“Of course, I would never, but I think it’s time to renegotiate the terms of our arrangement.”

Ainsley watched something pass between them in their eyes. Their hands moved almost the same moment. Endicott reached for his pistol, Martin for his sword. She barely saw the sword move. It sliced across Endicott’s neck, an arc of blood coming in its wake.

She watched Endicott fall to his knees, grasping his throat.

Martin wiped his blood off the sword with the tail of his cloak, “You see, Endicott. The sea wasn’t enough for me, anymore, and after all. You never sent me an invitation to my own daughter’s wedding.”

Ainsley felt a hand on her arm, felt herself pulled to her feet. She met the eyes of her mother, horrified, but determined. Jessica dragged her to the door and pushed her out of it. “Take her,” she said to someone over Ainsley’s shoulder and slammed the door shut.

“No!” Ainsley screamed just as another set of arms took hold of her and began pulling her away. “No!”

“Your mother wants you to get away,” said the man dragging her away. She looked up to see a tall, Black man.

“Who are you?”

“A friend of your mother’s,” he said, “Call me Mr. David.” Cold air hit her as they left the hallway for the deck, moving toward the ship ports.

“If you’re her friend, go get her,” Ainsley said, pulling free of him and punching his arm.

“Your mother has many friends in places you wouldn’t expect. And they will not let her come to harm. You have to go.”

“Go?” Ainsley shouted, “Go where. There’s nowhere to go.”

Mr. David shook his head. He looked calm despite the chaos exploding all around them, and it made the fury go straight through Ainsley’s bones.

Mr. David shook his head, “There’s a whole world outside the City, Ainsley.” He said, offering her his hand, and the choice to go or stay that she knew came with it.

_-_-_

The escape ship did not immediately fall dragging him into oblivion, and Nico counted that as a win. He set about fixing the releases so the ships could get away. Then there were people climbing over the edge, getting in the ship beside him. Nico frowned. There was something so orderly to the way they were climbing in, it did not seem possible. He looked up and saw Jin helping a woman climb down, his hand a firm hold for her. Nico frowned, focusing back on the task at hand. Once the release was fixed, he gripped the riggings and looked at the people. “Get to safety,” he said and thought it may have been the kindest thing he had said to a City Dweller since he was a child. Then he hit the release, and the escape ship launched, carrying them to safety.

He swung by his metallic arm, feet dangling free over the sky. Then there was a hand gripping his arm, helping him climb back up. Nico’s frown deepened as Jin helped him back onto the ship. “Next one?” was all the soldier said, but Nico said nothing. He just went to the next station. At that moment, he heard a commotion coming. Jin drew his pistol and aimed it.

“Don’t!” Nico cried, but Jin was already lowering it. Running toward them was Dani, Malcolm, and the soldier from before that Nico suspected could be no one but Malcolm’s erstwhile pen pal. They skidded to a stop.

“Nic!” Malcolm said.

“Idiot!” Nico replied, “You drug us here and then ran the fuck off!”

“Nic, we don’t have time,” Malcolm replied, “Do you have a way off?”

“No,” Nico replied, “They sabotaged the escape ships and,” he glanced at Jin before meeting his friend’s eyes again, “and I’m not leaving until all the escape ships are full and able to fly.”

Mal did not understand it, Nico saw this in his eyes. He did not understand it either. Yesterday, he would tell anyone he did not care one ounce if any Floater lived or died, but yesterday he was not faced with their blood staining the ship’s deck. Yesterday, he was not seeing their lifeless bodies hit the floor.

Something steeled in Malcolm’s eyes and he nodded, “So we’ll keep the pirates away from you, and you get as many people off as you can.”

“Leave one ship for us,” Dani said, “There needs to be one ship left for us.” Nico met her eyes and nodded, a promise passed without words. She accepted it, and the turned with her pistol out in front of her in one fluid motion. Malcolm followed, his sword catching the strung up lights and reflecting it. His soldier was slower, eyeing Nico like he was not certain this could be trusted, but follow he did.

Jin was the only one still facing him, he stepped up onto the side of the ship and offered Nico his hand.

_-_-_

Malcolm’s entire body was tense as he held the sword ready. The pirates were not to them yet, but they would come.

“They know you,” JT said, his voice pitched as low as he could to still be heard over the chaos. Bright’s eyes slid to him in his periphery, then looked forward again.

“Not all pirates know each other.”

“I didn’t say all pirates know each other. I said these pirates know you,” JT said, then lower, “And you’re not a pirate.”

“Not a distinction you’ve made before,” Bright replied, letting himself fully look JT’s way.

“Maybe not the only distinction I should have been making.” Then JT’s eyes snapped back to the line of soldiers as a pirate broke free. JT’s shot rang out, taking down one of the pirates, but the damage was clear. The soldiers were not holding them back any longer. Most of the crowd had reached them, scrambling into the boats, or else were already on their knees in the pirates’ clutches.

There was nothing left between Malcolm and the pirates he knew too well. His sword clashed against the curved blade of the nearest pirate. He did not know this man’s name. He was clearly new to the Surgeon’s crew, but he fought like one who had been there for years. Bright moved quickly, his sword flashing, but he gained no ground. He heard the sound of fighting from either side and knew Dani and JT were fighting their own battles.

The pirate pushed him and he stumbled, hitting the wall of the ship. The pirate slipped around his block, slicing his arm. Bright cried out, twisting away from the man. His sword hit the deck as he grabbed his arm.

He steeled himself against the pain. Curling up, he grabbed the dagger from his boot and then sprung at the man, getting him between the ribs. The man fell away from him, taking the blade with him. A hand grabbed the back of his collar and jerked him.

“Hello, little Malcolm.”

Bright’s blood ran cold. This was the voice that laced a thousand nightmares Bright wished he did not know were memories.

“Watkins,” he said, voice breathless. Then the arm snaked around his neck, pressed against his windpipe, and lifted. Malcolm felt his boots leave the deck, and he scrambled to grip the arm.

Then Bright heard a sound he had not heard since entering the airship. He heard the whirring of gears. A pair of wings spread out, a silhouette against the party lights, and then it swooped down. Watkins dropped him, scrambling for his weapon but he was too late. The winged creature slammed into him. With a scream, Watkins toppled over the side of the ship. The creature landed in front of Bright.

“Gil!” Malcolm shouted. He saw his surrogate father there with Nico’s winged contraption strapped around him. He looked like a dragon in that moment. Then he let the wings fall to the ship deck and became Bright’s father again. Gil grabbed him in a hug. “What? How?” Bright asked, hugging him back.

“Nico left me a note.”

“The wings carried you this whole way?” This was Nico, climbing back over the edge with the help of a soldier Bright did not recognize.

“We can unpack this later,” said Dani, her Captain voice in place. “Nic, where are we with the ships?” Bright turned and saw the look on his face. He knew that expression like he knew his own—better probably, if Dani’s constant belief in his lack of self-awareness was anything to go by. “Something went wrong.”

“There isn’t enough ships.”

Dani’s eyes hardened, “Explain.”

Nico motioned for the soldier who was helping a family into one of the ships. “It’s the last one, Dani…”

“You didn’t save us a ship.”

“They would have died,” Nico said quietly. Dani did not answer him. She turned to Gil and the wings. “How many people can those carry?”

“One, safely,” Nico replied, “Maybe two, but I haven’t designed it for that kind of strain.” Bright turned and watched the last escape ship sail away from them as the soldier came over and joined. His eyes were resigned.

Dani motioned for the bridge, “So we go to the other ships.”

_-_-_

Nico listened as Dani and Gil began scabbling over a plan. They would go to one of the other ships in the City, but there was now way to know what was happening over there. They could be running into yet more of the Surgeon’s Spirits. How many were there? Did anyone know? They had an escape, and Nico let it fly away, saving the live of City Dwellers. Floaters. People who hated him. The guilt spun in his gut, and he closed his eyes. Then a hand clamped down on his arm.

Nico’s eyes flew open, and he turned to see the pirate that Gil had knocked overboard, clutching his arm. The man growled, using it to pull himself up. Nico stumbled under the weight of the much larger man. Then the man was on the deck again, a jagged dagger in his hand. He pressed to the soft flesh of Nico’s throat. Nico watched his friends still, watched Malcolm’s hand go up.

“Watkins, don’t.”

“He’s with you, little Mal?” the man, Watkins asked, his mouth a snarl. “Then I suggest you drop your weapons and get your friends to drop them. Do it!” Nico felt the knife cutting into his throat, felt a trickle of blood roll down.

“Alright!” Mal dropped his sword, hands going up. Dani and Gil followed suit. Nico’s eyes flitted to the two soldiers. Neither one of them owed him anything. They could let him die and kill this Watkin’s while his body cooled. It was a better play, the smart play. Saving him gained them nothing.

JT lowered his weapon to the deck.

The only one still holding a weapon was Jin, his pistol trained on Watkins, his eyes narrowed in focus. “Alright,” he said, and slowly lowered it to the deck. Then at the last moment before it left his fingers, he flung it at Watkins. Watkin’s dodged, his knife moving just enough that Nico could duck away.

In one fluid motion, Jin was between them, blocking Nico from harm and squaring off with Watkins empty-handed. Nico heard the others scrambling for their weapons, and then curse. He spared a glance their way and understood at once.

He did not know if all of Endicott’s soldiers were dead or if they retreated to defend some other part of the ship, but there in front of him were the Surgeon’s Spirits, moving in unison with nothing between them and his friends. Nico knew at once they would not make it across the bridges. They would not make it anywhere. He watched his friends turn to face the oncoming hoard. To face certain death, side by side. They set their stances on a deck covered with discarded masquerade masks, their last determined stand under the lights meant to celebrate a wedding.

Nico cursed, deploying his crossbow again and turning back to Jin. The soldier had somehow gotten a knife—where was he hiding that?—and was keeping his own against Watkins, but Nico saw blood running from a wound on Jin’s arm and one just over his cheek. Nico lifted his bow and tried to get a clear shot, but Watkins and Jin were weaving around each other. He could not hit one without risking the other.

Nico knew he should turn and join his family, should face the impossible at their side, but Jin rescued him. Nico could not leave him to die alone. He charged forward, conscious of his size and his long ranged weapon, but he had to try. As Watkins bobbed away from Jin’s strike, Nico shouldered into his side. It caused him to stumble, though not as much as he hoped. The dagger swung toward him. Nico got his metal arm up in time, the blade let out a clang as it smacked into it.

Jin took the moment’s distraction to slide up to Watkins’ side and jab his knife between the man’s ribs. Watkins howled with pain, whipping around to slam his fist into the side of Jin’s head. The soldier staggered and Watkins slashed. Nico watched in horror as blood blossomed across Jin’s neck.

_-_-_

“Run,” Mr. David told Ainsley, pointing toward a group of people. Her eyes widened. The black clad pirates seemed to be converging on the last group that was not already dead or captured.

“Why would I run toward the pirates?” Ainsley said, then her eyes caught on the figure. Her ghost, only she knew now not a ghost at all. Malcolm, her Malcolm, was fighting off a pirate twice his size. Dani fought at his side, her red cloak swishing around her as she spun. She saw JT as well, at their side. There was another man, she felt her heart clench. Gil? She barely remembered him from the days before her mother took her away, but there was a time she viewed Gil more as a father than her own biological one.

Then Ainsley ran. She did not know what good she could do, still clutching Dani’s knife she did not know how to use against a hoard of pirates who had killed so many. She did not know what she could do, but Mr. David told her to run and so she ran. She ran to the people she barely knew, who had taken up so much space in her mind.

Then she saw the other fight. She saw Jin standing between a pirate and a smaller man. She saw the other man interject himself into the fight. Saw Jin get in a devastating blow. He was incredible to watch in motion. Ainsley realized that in all her time with him, she never watched Jin train. Such a large part of his life, and she did not notice until this moment, she never cared to learn more about him.

Then Watkins spun with his dagger, slicing across Jin’s throat. Slicing through her thoughts. She stopped her run dead, just shy of them. In a sickening parallel to Endicott moments before, Jin fell to his knees.

Days ago Endicott and Jin had been her life. Endicott her jailer, emotionally and in too many ways actually. Jin had been her momentary escape. Then the dagger’s strike came, a strike that seemed a part of the Surgeon’s training for his men, executed with such devastating similarity. These two men were different, but when they fell, they fell the same.

But this blow did not have the surgical cleanness of Martin’s slice. Jin fell to his knees, his hands going quickly to try and staunch the blood, but he did not fall further.

Watkins’ did that part himself.

He kicked Jin, making him hit the deck with a thud. Then he stepped on his leg and twisted. Ainsley flinched in horror as Jin screamed in pain. “No!” Ainsley said, her word echoed by the smaller man.

She ran again, slicing blindly with the knife. She struck the muscles of the pirates arm. He cursed at her, but the strike was hardly damaging. The smaller man jumped on Watkins’ back, punching at his head. The pirate grabbed him and threw him off. The man hit the deck with a thud.

“Jin!” Ainsley cried as this man lifted him up, bleeding and broken, and tossed him over the side like he was nothing.

_-_-_

“Jin!” Nico screamed. He did not hesitate. He ran, grabbing the wings off the deck, slinging his arm through one strap and jumping over the side before he was even fully fastened in. He struggled with the straps, hearing them click. Then he folded the wings, sending himself into a nosedive, he reached his arms out.

_-_-_

Jin did not believe in mermaids. He heard the stories the same as any City Dweller child. He heard people say that the pirates worshipped them. That the Surgeon of the Sea fed his victims to the mermaids. Jin did not believe in mermaids, but sometimes he dreamed of them.

As his eyes flitted open and shut, as the wind whipped at him viciously, as he fell, he saw a dark creature diving toward him.

When he dreamed of mermaids, they always came for him from below, not above.

_-_-_

They stood in a rough circle, Bright, Dani, JT, and Gil as they fought the pirates, trying to keep any of them from getting caught from behind. It would not work for long. There were still only four of them.

Bright heard a scream. His eyes whipped for just a moment to the side of the ship. Jin and Nico were gone and Watkins stood at the side. Then there she was. Ainsley standing on the remnants of her celebration, dressed like a mermaid. Tattered from the fighting, the running, and the blood she looked less like the garish costume of a mermaid, and more like the illustrations of the vicious sea beasts. Her hair was free and wild in the wind, a knife in her hand.

She was a fearsome thing.

Watkins turned toward her, and she screamed again. This time Malcolm realized it was not a scream of fear. Like a banshee, she shrieked and attacked, stabbing the much larger man in the shoulder. Malcolm broke the circle and ran toward her.

_-_-_

Ainsley sunk her blade into the pirate’s shoulder a second time. He was bloody and wounded from the fight with Jin and the other man. He would go down, but whatever cruel adrenaline was keeping him up was not done with him yet. The pirate grabbed her wrist in a crushing grip.

She screamed again, the sound ripped out of her very soul. Years of submission. Years of bending herself, crushing herself, forcing herself to fit into whatever shape other people needed. Years of surviving by compromising. Surviving by shrieking, by making herself less. Every ounce of anger buried in the recesses of her body released in that sound and she twisted in his grip, biting his hand.

“Bitch!” he called her, but he staggered. The cumulated wounds were finally sinking in. Then a sword sliced across his other arm. The pirate stumbled. With satisfaction she watched the monster fall to his knees, but this time she was the one standing over him and behind him, wielding the sword was her ghost.

His hand shook, hesitated, and Ainsley knew in that moment that whatever had happened to her brother at the hands of their father, he was not a killer.

Ainsley did not share his reservations. She had suffered at the hands of Endicott, but his death was claimed by the only man she hated worse. She did not know this man, this pirate, but she knew men like him.

When she stabbed him in the heart, she felt nothing at all.

Watkins fell, taking Dani’s dagger with him. She looked at Malcolm, but he did not seem horrified by her. He just stared at her. “Hey Malcolm,” she said.

Then Gil, Dani, and JT backed up to where they stood. They were bloody. They were bruised.

They were losing.

“We’re going to die,” Ainsley said.

“You know how to throw a party,” Malcolm replied.

“You know how to crash one,” JT said, and Ainsley knew in that moment that the soldier loved her brother. She thought, I’m glad he was loved, if only for a moment before the end.

_-_-_

Bright turned his eyes from Ainsley to JT, then to Dani, and finally Dani. “I’m sorry,” he said. The pirates had slowed their assault, and Bright knew it was because they had won. He wondered if he could fight hard enough to keep them from taking him alive.

If he could die before they dragged him to his father.

Then the ship shook violently.

Bright cursed. His mind trying to comprehend what fresh hell was his father raining onto this ship, but he saw the pirates in front of them look just as confused. Malcolm followed their gazes up. Despite the blood gushing from his wounded arm, Bright doubted he could already be hallucinating from blood loss, but he thought he saw Edrisa descending from the clouds.

He blinked and realized that was exactly what he did see. The platform of a ship lowered, Edrisa standing on it with outstretched hands. “Jump up!” she called.

And sharp cracks began sounding. People on the deck of the small ship began firing their pistols and the pirates retreated back from the group. A tall, dark-haired Latina woman stood above the rest, her brown eyes flashing. “Cut the bridges!” she called, and Bright watched as the bridges connecting the Aria to the other ships of the City fall away. Someone on the other side of them must have cut them free.

“Come on!” Edrisa called again. Ainsley did not need any more prompting. She stepped up onto the side of the ship and leaped to the platform. Edrisa caught her and pulled her on. Bright felt his shoulder pushed, and saw JT give him a shove.

“You heard her, go!”

Bright started to take the step forward, but hesitated. “You’re coming too!” He knew then he was right, the way JT’s eyes darkened. “You’re not staying here dammit!”

“How can I abandon them? The one’s that are alive? I’m a soldier!”

“You can’t save them!”

“I can’t leave them.”

Then Bright turned fully back around, “Fine.” He lifted his sword again, “So we stay.”

“Dammit Bright, go!”

“No!” Bright shouted back, “I’m not going. If you’re staying, I’m staying.”

Dani squared her shoulder, in her fighting stance again, “I’m not leaving either of you.”

Then Gil moved to join them.

Bright met JT’s eyes, felt them searching him, and then going over the others. He watched as the soldier’s determination shifted and then crumbled all at once. “Go,” JT said, grabbing Bright’s uninjured arm and moving with him this time. Bright shifted the grip, instead taking JT’s hand. Without hesitation, they stepped up on the side and jumped together. They hit the platform and Bright nearly fell, but JT caught him, his arm shifting around Bright’s back to stop him from going down.

Bright stared up into JT’s gaze for a moment, then twisted in his hold to look back. He watched Dani jump, her boots skidding as she hit the platform. He saw Edrisa grab her wrist to pull her safely on, but it was Ainsley that took her arm to steady her. “Who are they?” Dani asked.

“Revolutionaries!” Edris replied, tone far too excited.

Then Bright turned back and a scream lodged in his throat.

Gil stood on the side of the ship ready to jump just as one of the pirates shot a crossbow. The arrow, with rope attached to it, pierced Gil’s shoulder. Bright watched his father figure cry out, then the pirate jerked him back, reeling him in like a fish.

Bright stretched out his hand, like he could catch him. “Gil!” He tried to stumble to the edge, to jump back over, but the ship was already moving away from the Aria and he felt JT’s arms encircle his middle. “No!” He fought, he kicked, trying to get free. “Gil!”

He watched the pirates take him captive as the platform raised back into the body of the ship. Before it closed, he saw Gil still fighting back.

_-_-_

There was noise and chaos on the deck of the small ship, but the tiny crew of people sitting in a circle with Bright were quiet. JT stood off to the side, watching them. Ainsley was shaking, hugging herself for warmth that would not come. Edrisa kept looking, one to the other of them, her eyes wide. Dani stood too, motionless, her expression stoney. Then there was Bright. Bright went from screaming and fighting to entirely still. He sat on a barrel on the deck of the ship unmoving, his blood dripping from his wounded arm.

JT wanted to go to him, but before he could move, Dani approached. She nodded to him like they were old friends, not long lost siblings nearly reunited. It was too casual for what they were to each other, for what they had been through, but then, JT did not know what action would feel right in this moment. Maybe nothing ever would feel right again. “Edrisa says they’ve been plotting to take the City from Endicott for months,” Dani said, “And they saw their chance.” She motioned toward the sky and they both looked. The City, the flying ships of various sizes all connected by bridges was shattered. Now each ship flew off in its own direction.

“We had hoped to take the Aria,” said a voice. JT turned to see the woman who he decided must be in charge approach. “But it is in the Surgeon’s hands.” She looked at them. “But we’ve freed the rest of the City.”

“Your people are in charge of all the ships?”

The woman nodded, “There will still be soldiers and loyalists on the other ships to deal with, but my crew has taken over each helm.”

“You move fast.”

“Revolutions don’t wait for anyone,” she replied, “Once we dock at the other ship’s port, there will be a small vessel you can take to return to wherever the others came from.” She looked at him, “Or you could stay. The revolution could use a few more soldiers.”

JT looked at her and shook his head, “I think…I need to go where they go.”

“Captain Jackie!” A voice called, and the woman straightened,

“Fair enough,” she said to JT, “See to your people, soldier. They need you.” Then she walked off. JT looked at Dani, and the two of them as one walked over to the others.

Dani took off her coat, placing it over Ainsley’s shoulders.

JT sat down beside Malcolm. It was instinct, or maybe because he needed it to, but he grabbed Malcolm and drew him in. The seafarer curled into him, the first movement he made since he sat down.

Edrisa moved slowly over to them. Without speaking, she took Malcolm’s arm and began dressing it with cloth. There would need to be more care given to it, but it would do for now. They all had wounds that would need more care.

They all would have to do for now.

“Captain Jackie!” Called another woman. “Something is coming in.”

“Something?” Jackie asked, “Be more specific, Eve.”

“I…a thing with wings?” Eve said, “A…winged person?”

Bright’s head snapped up and he pulled out of JT’s arms. He stood.

“Don’t shoot!” JT called to the crew around them, “He’s not a threat.”

Then Nico flew in, flying somewhat crooked, something in his arms. Then JT realized, _someone_ in his arms. JT ran forward, reaching out as Nico dropped, hitting the deck and stumbling. JT caught them, taking the burden from his arms. Jin was motionless, bleeding furiously from his wounded throat, his leg at an angle that made JT hurt to look at.

JT lowered him to the deck. “We need help!” He called. Edrisa was beside him in a second, and one of the members of Jackie’s crew, a man. JT was vaguely aware that they both must have some medical training. He stepped away, giving them space to work and felt Ainsley’s hand on his arm.

“Is he…” she asked, and JT remembered her that day on the deck of the Aria, watching the red sun set when she asked him to check on Jin. He did not know what this man was to her, though he had a guess or two, but in the end of the day, he meant something to her. Pain radiated from her eyes.

“He’s breathing,” JT said, it was not much, not much at all with injuries that severe, but he was breathing.

JT turned his eyes back to the others. He saw Nico drop his wings to the deck and in one motion take Bright in his arms and hug him. He saw Dani step in and their arms opened to bring each other in, their foreheads all touching as they huddled there.

It was not much, JT thought, but they were all still breathing.

_-_-_

Martin Whitly, the Surgeon of the Sea, watched the ships of the City each departing in different directions. Flying free as they had never been since Endicott conceived them. It was a loss, sure, but it did not matter. The Aria, under his control, would seek each of them out. He would take them, one by one until the entire City was his. He stepped through the pool of Endicott’s blood, flourishing his cloak as he turned, and sat on Endicott’s captain’s chair. Endicott’s body lay at his feet and he smiled.

He would get the whole City back. One day he would own everything that was once Endicott’s. “Jessica,” he said, looking at the horrified figure of his former wife, “Be a dear and hand me that paper and quill. I have a letter to write.”


	12. Epilogue

_My Boy,_

_I understand you were on the ship tonight. We nearly had a true family reunion, didn’t we? Your mother and sister here for her wedding. You and I were not invited, rudely of course, but somehow we all made it just the same. That goes to show the bonds of family are strong._

_So you, my boy, have started a revolution? What an interesting use of your time, but then, I never cared much for old Endicott either. If I had known how easy it would be to make his people turn on him maybe I would have slit his throat sooner._

_But that is neither here nor there. You have started a revolution or at least gotten involved in one, and it does not appear that it is stopping with Endicott’s untimely death. I hope you know what you are doing, my boy. Young people have a way of dying when there is a revolution around. It is so hard to keep a thing like that under control._

_I am sad we could not meet in person while we were so close for the first time in all these years, but I am confident you will come back. After all, I have something of yours don’t I? Just at this moment, my soldiers are making sure your beloved Pub Owner is safely secured in our guest quarters. I imagine you will come to visit him soon. That and your mother is here._

_Bring your sister when you come. We will have a good old Whitly family reunion then._

_Good luck with your little revolution, my boy, and be careful to watch your back. You never know who is really on your side. I learned that the hard way with you didn’t I?_

_Love,_

_Your Father_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading the Big Bang challenge fic! Please stay tuned for a new story in this saga, coming to an AO3 near you, soon!


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